


The Rogue: Mutants of the American Civil War

by MosbyBenjaminBarley



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: American Civil War, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MosbyBenjaminBarley/pseuds/MosbyBenjaminBarley
Summary: This is the story of Anna Marie/Rogue's ancestor during the American Civil War.





	The Rogue: Mutants of the American Civil War

I was seventeen.

I have learned since then that some have their experience earlier. Maybe I was a late bloomer. At any rate, it was a nerve-racking experience, and came completely unexpected, but it was a rite of passage nonetheless. Somehow we become special or odd, to ourselves and to others, in how they see us, if they knew.

In Mississippi, where the fire-eaters’ fever had spread from the east, driving stump speakers mad with notions of secession, cotton there was aplenty, but the money in the hands of the few. Pray that your flight be not in winter. Because that’s when we went flying out of that Union fast and furious, and cast our lot in with our sister states. Shivering around a wood-burning stove in a three-room house with my four younger brothers and sisters and our mama, we survived off dry hoecakes and sour field peas. This type of diet will give you an eye for stealing. And I’ve had my wrist snatched with a fistful of contraband more times than I can count. Even to the decked-out Negro house servants in columned mansions on the hill, we were grouped into that class commonly referred to as white trash. This term is often spoken out the side of the mouth with a sneer and cutting eyes. I didn’t do much to help it. There are boocoos of words that society uses for people like me: vagrant, miscreant, rascal, scoundrel, good-for-nothing.

So many names. I don’t think they had a name for me yet.

My real name is Abel. The name my mother gave me. And our family name, Owens. My hair was copper brown, and you could really see the red in it when the sun was shining on it. Children usually go bareheaded. Natchez is quite a town; a land of opportunity for petty thieves and crooks. Lots of money going around. If people are going to be fools, you might as well take them for one. Makes it easier if you stifle your conscience. Running errands is one of the surest ways of skimming when you’re a kid. Jus’ take this and run on down to Bunk’s for that purchase, then bring back the change. And I’ll give you that ham hock to carry home for your mama to fix for you and your brothers. Yes, ma’am. Walk the mile into town and then back again with both hands wrapped around the open end of a tow sack. Then offer up the change on an innocent little palm. Oh, did it cost that much? Hmm, musta raised his prices. Oh well, a deal’s a deal.

I didn’t always go it alone. My flair for confidence tricks often partnered me with someone older. I’d be the first to make contact. Hello, sir. My daddy really wants to buy that horse, ef you’ve a mind to sell him. He don’t have it all right now, but here’s ten dollars. He’ll come in a week to give you the rest, ef you’ll wait for him. Then I leave. My part’s half done. Willie then dresses up in his fine duds a couple days later, and heads down to talk to the man. Why, I heard you were selling that horse, and I must have him. I’ll pay you fifteen more than what you’re selling him for. No? How ‘bout twenty? My, that’s such a splendid animal. Twenty-five? I must have him. Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll come back in a week.

Now you go in for the kill, kid. Get our ten dollars back, and another five for your trouble. We’ll split it, $2.50 each.

I would thank bad luck, but it wasn’t luck but my own lying that landed me in the army. Fudging on your age can backfire, even if it does gain you a little more respect. They passed the draft in ’62. All able-bodied men, eighteen to thirty-five. The man from the draft board came to find me when I didn’t report. He didn’t believe me when I said I was seventeen. Why would he? Of course, I skipped town at the first chance. But I got picked up in Fayette trying to jump a train, and it didn’t take them long to wire the county over and find out who I was. And back I went with a knot on the side of my head and shackles on my ankles. The recruiter snorted with cynicism as he scribbled on his ledger while I pleaded in vain that I wasn’t eighteen yet.

The 10th Mississippi was filled with boys my age. Our commanding officer, recently promoted, was Colonel Caldecott. There were a lot of grown men in there as well; men with beards and chest hair, and the stink of alcohol and desertion on them. The expected one thousand head count never happened. Discipline was meager. When I first mustered in for service, the quartermaster issued me my uniform. A plain gray shirt that only buttoned halfway down, gray britches that were too big in the waist, and a black felt hat that was way too small. I hated it. But they kept telling me I had to wear it or put the shackles back on. After tucking my shirt in, I could tighten my belt to keep my britches up, but the hat could only sit atop my head ready to fly off at the first sudden movement. I ended up trading it to a drummer boy who was proud to have it, in exchange for a gray kepi cap that fit my head right. I didn’t even receive any shoes. I was told to wear the ones I had, and that I was lucky to have those because they didn’t have any to give me. For weeks there was little but marching and drilling to the many different bugle calls, and the occasional corrective punishment. I especially came to the attention of the lieutenant and other officers during a surprise inspection of the barracks, standing behind me looking down over my shoulder with a frown as I shuffled walnut shells with the hidden peanut underneath.

My regiment marched out of Natchez in February. It wasn’t so bad on the move, but stopping at night to break camp was a time for shivering knees and chattering teeth. After we passed through the old capital of Washington, Mississippi, it was just countryside for nigh on sixty miles. Camp life was about as filthy and good a place to take ill as any. By the time we got to Brookhaven where the railroad ran through, some of us were already sick, and we were dying to pack into the cars out of the cold. My first skirt with death happened, not from enemy fire, but measles. I had never had measles when I was a child and it hit me hard. The good thing though was that it gave me an excuse to temporarily quit the army because I was so sick I couldn’t even sit up. I was transferred to the hospital in Columbus in east Mississippi. One of the nurses there in the ward, a pretty lady in a white apron, was the kindest person I had ever met. She couldn’t spend much time for each patient, but I looked forward just to have someone to talk to who wouldn’t holler and bark at me. I think most of the other men and boys in there felt the same way. Their silent eyes followed her around that room.

When she came to me, she asked how I was feeling and gave me some fresh water. And she felt of my forehead with her small white hand. It was a lovely hand.

“You—you don’t…get sick?”

She just smiled in her kind way and said, “I had measles when I was little, so I don’t think I will get sick from you.” She kept her hand there a moment above my eyes, and said, “You’re still hot—” but something happened right then and there, and her words abruptly turned to a frightful moan and gasps for air. I remember her face always, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth open and trembling, right before she plummeted to the floor. In that very moment I felt better, the hurting in my head and body, gone. I sat up in bed, full of vigor, and I looked down at her in the floor, dismayed and startled at what had just happened. I didn’t know what to do or think. She lay there with her eyes closed, passed out. That’s when I noticed my arms. The red rash had all disappeared, not a spot left anywhere. I pulled my shirt up and checked my chest. Clean and clear. My first thought was, it’s a miracle! But it couldn’t be a miracle. Not at the expense of someone like her. She wasn’t like me. She wasn’t bad.

I was seventeen.

I wasn’t used to these feelings of guilt. The other nurse came in, the older one, and finding her on the floor, called for the doctor. They asked me what had happened, and for the first time in my life I didn’t need to lie to protect myself. I said, I didn’t know. She jes’ fainted. They got her up off the floor and carried her away, and I sprang out of bed fully rested like I had just had a good eight-hours sleep. I figured I would take this opportunity to slip out of the hospital like I normally would. And as I did so, I stopped and noticed all the suffering right there around me. It was overwhelming. All those men and boys; sick, wounded, dying. I didn’t know what I could do for them. But I wanted to.

I walked out of the hospital feeling wretched but in perfect health. I left the hospital grounds, but I had never been to Columbus before, and I didn’t know where I was going. I thought about heading to the train station, but on my way there I ran into a sergeant who finding me wandering absent without leave, accosted me, “Where the hell you think you’re going?”

I stammered I had been in the hospital with measles.

“You look well enough now. Get your ass back to camp!”

I spent my eighteenth birthday alone and stationed with grown strangers, drudging at camp duty and waiting for orders. Not a wishful word was uttered to me all day. Of course, they didn’t know it was my birthday because I had lied about it. Before long I was on a train with other stragglers to join up with the army in “Cross City.”

Corinth, for all I had heard of it, was a disappointment to the eyes for it wasn’t much more than a railroad town where the tracks intersected. But there were a lot of people there. Natchez was much more impressive and prettier. I had never been so far from home. By the end of March, a bustle of activity was in full force as preparations were being made. We knew the Yankees were coming, and every day more trains came whistling in carrying regiments upon regiments, strengthening the army. We were mostly armed with shotguns, flintlocks, and pikes. Most fellows I spoke to had not seen any combat yet, and we had a false sense of security. There was a hospital in Corinth, and some sick and wounded arrived by train along with supplies and other passengers. They unloaded them from the cars like sacks of flour, laying the barely-breathing bodies in the grass until they could transport them by wagon to the hospital.

I was standing there watching them when one of the wounded tugged at my pants leg. He was a boy about my age. His face was dirty and caked with dried blood, and he had bandages around his head. Apparently some accidental explosion. He struggled to breathe. His hand was reaching up to me, like he wanted something. I felt a tiny pang of the sympathy that had been fading somewhat since I arrived in Corinth. There was nothing I could do for him. Only God and the doctors could help him now. I slowly held my hand out and let him take it. I thought he was going to tell me something, but before he spoke a word, I felt the strange sensation I had in the hospital with the nurse, this time even stronger. I could feel his heartbeat in his hand, traveling into mine, and through my wrist and arm all the way to my heart. His face strained and his eyes opened a little wider as he opened his mouth in a small quivering gasp. And then he was gone.

I dropped the limp hand and called frantically for a doctor. But there was no doctor around. One of the men who was helping unload came over casually and knelt down by him for a second. “This one’s dead.”

I backed away in dread, shaking my head in disbelief. “I killed him. I killed him.”

The train man, harsh but well-meaning, stood up and tried to calm me down taking me by the shoulder, but I wrenched away from him. I couldn’t stop looking at those open dead eyes staring up from the ground. “I’m cursed. I’m cursed!” I shrieked. People were beginning to stare. I ran from the train depot across town until I was standing in an open field somewhere by myself. I stood there a few minutes catching my breath, convincing myself that the train man was right. He was half dead when he got here. He breathed his last breath as you were holding his hand. Just calm down now.

I didn’t know what to believe. I walked slowly back into town.

I was quiet for the next couple of days, not really talking to anyone. Whatever goings on there was in Corinth at that time was under the command of the Texian general Johnston who had served in three different nations’ armies: the Texas army, the United States army, and now the Confederate army. We were in good hands. As for my hands, I kept them in my pockets or close to my side the whole time. I went to ferret out one of my pals who owed me a little money. I only had one pair of underwear and my socks had holes in them, and soon my shoes would, too. Unfortunately, when I found him, it turned out I wasn’t the only one he owed money to. He didn’t quite have the gift. Playing cards had emptied my friend’s pockets so that he didn’t even have his next meal. He looked dejected standing there outside the station with his hands hanging down. I decided not to press him for it, but offered to share my hardtack with him.

“You going to add that to my account?” he drawled.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You can pay me later.”

Army life can be quite dull when you’re standing around waiting for something to happen. People get agitated. With the streets and taverns full of soldiers, there was nowhere a person could go without bumping into someone. As we stood there letting the stony wafers soak in our thin coffee, a group of boys and young men came sauntering out of the Tishomingo Hotel talking and laughing. I noticed the largest of the gang, a hefty boy over six feet tall. He had some meat on his shoulders and forearms, as well as a little bit of a belly. And he had a cleft chin that protruded beyond a grinning mouth that only partially disguised a potential for violence. I immediately disliked him, and I didn’t even know him, though I recognized some of the others. They recognized my friend, too, because when they saw him, they came our way and casually greeted him in an unsettling yet friendly way. It was obvious what they wanted.

“I told y’all yesterday,” he pleaded. “Till the end of the month. It’s only a few days away. I don’t have even one chaw or any vittles. My friend here jes’ had to give me some dinner.”

A sleazy fellow with a short beard poked him. “Yeah? I say that’s bull. He’s prob’ly fed up with you as much as we are.”

One of the other boys in their group stood staring at me for a second, and then pointed his finger. “‘ey, I know you. You’re that sharp from Natchez.” His little declaration caught the attention of the others. “Yeah, he was taking bets the whole time we was drilling. You come up to clean everybody out?” he said smirking.

My reputation preceded me.

“A man’s got to make a livin’,” my pal said. He wasn’t helping.

“He was crackin’ up the other day all at the sight of a dead man,” a skinny boy said. “You shoulda seen him, grabbin’ his skirt tails and screamin’ like a woman.”

The whole group burst out laughing.

“Jus’ wait till the fighting gets started,” another said. “He’ll be running in the opposite direction from the rest of the army.” They just couldn’t quit. Finally, after they got tired of laughing, the hefty boy pointed at my friend.

“Don’t you forget to come see us tomorrow.” They were about to melt away.

“Not if I got nothin’,” my friend answered.

He turned back and eyed him fiercely. “Wha’d you say to me?” He was a full head taller than my buddy, and about the same for me. I don’t know why I said it.

“Leave him alone.”

The hardcase looked at me, and then came closer and stood over me. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Don’t touch me. You’ll be sorry.”

He pursed his lips and glanced at his buddies with wide eyes of mock fear. They oohed in like mockery. He turned his full attention on me, and gave me a small push with the tips of his fingers. “Oh, you mean like that?” I could feel the anger rising. “How ‘bout like this?” He gave me a sharp slap to the cheek, quick and stinging. He was in my face now, breathing heavy like an angry bull. He was waiting for me to make a move. “Maybe you’re jus’ a little pussy that’s all mouth.”

He grabbed my face, clenching my cheeks between his fingers and thumb. His hand felt like a vise. I didn’t bother fighting his hand off. It was only a few seconds, just like with the others. That strange sensation that made my flesh crawl started seeping through my cheeks. I watched his face change from cocky anger to sour fear. His fun-loving mouth drooped into a quivering frown, and I could see rivulets in his face. His whole body started to tremble, and that’s when I put my hand up and grabbed the big paw wrenched around my cheeks. I could feel his strength fading into me as I pried his hand loose from my face. I squeezed until the bones in his hand popped loud enough for the others to hear. He started sinking down to his knees. I was angry now. Real angry. I was crushing his hand as he tried to moan, and that’s when he fell over hitting his head on one of the wooden posts. Then I let go of his hand.

He was out cold. The other guys stood there stunned silent, staring at him and then me, and then him again lying face down on the ground. A couple officers noticed the small crowd around me and came over. They didn’t ask too many questions before I was arrested for assault. At first they thought I had stabbed him. But when they found no knife wound, they didn’t know what to think. Nobody had seen me take a swing at him. And no shots had been fired. Apparently he didn’t die because I was never charged with murder. I sat in the stockade through the first week of April during which time the army of Mississippi marched out of Corinth. Forty thousand men, I was told. They were heading to Shiloh in Tennessee.

I still had not seen combat. Alone in that cell, my mind began to drift. I had the wildest thoughts. Faces would pop up into my memory, names would form on my lips without me trying, those which I had neither seen nor heard. When I slept, I had dreams of people and places I had never known. I became frightfully confused, and I thought I was losing my mind. My physical strength gradually subsided as well. Whatever toughness I had gained from that fight, it was gone by the time they let me out.

I was told to report back to my regiment, and that I had better be on my best behavior. I was given a job chopping wood outside the surgeon’s office. The army of Mississippi, or what was left of it, was dragging back into Corinth. There had been a major battle, one I had missed, and the Yankees had whipped us. General Johnston was dead, and the condition of some of the wounded and dying coming in on wagons and litters would raise your hair; blackened and bloody faces, missing hands, arms, legs, and other body parts. We kept hearing reports that the Union army was right on our heels, but day after day passed, and still no sight of them. It wasn’t twenty miles to Shiloh, but everyone was reeling from the carnage and the number of men killed. There were plenty of horror stories to listen to from the survivors.

During that time, the surgeon’s assistant came down with typhoid, and they had me take his place until he could recover. I personally requisitioned some of the doctor’s morphine and Dover’s powders and began making a little pocket money selling pain killers to citizen and soldier alike. Those items were also good for the flux, so they sold pretty well. Eventually, though, they caught on to me, and I was immediately removed from the surgeon’s office and placed back in the ranks. The rest of April passed without any more blood.

May was another story. At the beginning of the month, the Yankees moved in close and captured some town only four miles outside of Corinth. We were standing toe to toe again, and everyone was nervous. We could hear the cannons booming a couple miles or so away, sitting on pins and needles wondering how the boys were doing up there, and if we were going to be called up to the front at any given time. They were digging earthworks. Day after day went by as the Confederate army scrambled back and forth around the city, losing ground an inch at a time.

After the third week of May, my regiment received orders to deploy. We marched down the road till we came to a big log house standing at the edge of a cotton field full of dried brown stalks from last year. There we were ordered to stack muskets and get to work. We used our bayonets and bowie knives on the chinking between the logs, digging slots out of the musty wood and corn cob until we had firing holes all along the four walls of the house. We also hauled water in there to put out any fires. Then we waited. When we heard the artillery go off, we knew it was that time. Peeping between those logs with our muzzles sticking out, we could see those blue uniforms marching across the field toward us, two whole brigades of them. We started picking them off. They fired back, and we could feel their bullets pounding the wall of logs, making us flinch. There were so many of them, I don’t think we even had enough bullets for each one. When they came within fifty feet of the log house, we started taking off, pouring out the back door and running helter-skelter through the cotton field. We rejoined with the main line of our people, and we all gave the yell and counterattacked. But as soon as we came within range of their artillery, it really put a damper on our day. We never got the log house back.

Some of the other picket outposts weren’t doing so well either at keeping the Yankees at bay. Besides that, we were sick. There had been so much digging and piling up of earthworks around the city, not to mention men pissing anywhere they could find a standing spot, that the water had become nasty. People were shitting their brains out and laid up with fever. And everyone was afraid to drink the water. Every day miserable people were dying in their beds while the Union guns got a little closer. I was really getting tired of this war. I didn’t volunteer for this. I hadn’t had a bath in two weeks, and I had a rash on my body.

From dealing pain killers, I had gotten my hands on something clean to quench my thirst. One of the pickets on the east side of town so happened to have a second cousin in the area who was willing to share with his soldiering kin. I had traded a whole vial of morphine for a flask of his cousin’s corn in the jug.

“You know as well as I do, it’s jus’ a matter of time,” he said. “We migh’ as well be the first ones.”

“What if we’re not?” I asked.

He spit. “Don’t matter.” He was a little bit older than me, and for that he was self-assured. “They ain’t going to send you back.”

“Why don’t you jes’ go home? You got kin near here.”

“Desertin’ jus’ gits you hunted down like a dawg.”

I had done tried that.

“I ain’t gonna rot in this shithole,” he said. “I know you’re fed up with it. Ain’tcha?” His eyebrows raised with his question, showing the whites of his eyes. I didn’t want to sound too eager. I just kept staring at the treeless field of scattered undergrowth and red dirt. There were a few logs laid out as barricades to artillery, but that was it. It seemed too easy.

“I reckon.”

“Yeah, you are. I sho as hell am.” He turned his stare away from me, and sipped again. We both drank from tin cups. The jug he had hid, I knew not where. We weren’t that close. It’s not a good idea to get drunk during a siege, no matter how thirsty you are. “You keep your mouth shut,” he said bringing the cup to his lips, “I’ll let you tag along.”

They had given us three days’ rations. And they had told us to prepare for a fight.

“Might even give us a reward,” he said, though it was as much to himself as to me. He seemed to mull it over. I left him at his post and went back to work for the rest of the day until the evening was dying in twilight. I couldn’t take everything; just what I could stuff in my pockets without looking too suspicious. I almost chickened out, but at the last minute I wandered back over to the east side of town and found him.

He knew the shifts and the habits of the pickets. He had also picked out the exact spot ahead of time, and studied it in the daylight, so that he moved as comfortably as a blind man in his own house. I followed on his heels as we wormed our way through the crude abatis. Careful and silent, I copied his every footstep and handhold. Once we were past the branches, we had to sneak a ways before standing upright to walk.

With Corinth to our backs, our feet found their way along the uneven ground. We walked in silence for some time. At a certain point I slowed down and fell behind. He walked on a few yards before he noticed I wasn’t with him. And then he stopped. I could see the dark blur of his bent shape looking back at me.

“What are you doing?” he whispered. I didn’t answer. We were two faceless phantoms looking at each other in the dark. “Come on, we’re halfway there.” We could see the Union campfires burning fitfully in the distance. I just stood there offering no word or signal. He repeated himself, and then his eager voice became agitated, and he shuffled in frustration.

“Come on!” he uttered in a harsh whisper, beckoning with an impatient hand. I was still standing in the spot where I had stopped. When I didn’t answer, he gave a dismissive wave and kept on walking, never looking back. For a couple minutes I watched him shrink into a blurry spot in the dark, and then he was gone.

I was alone.

I turned around and started walking back to the city. It took me a little longer since my pace was slower. When I neared the picket lines, I got down and crawled on my belly. I found I was in a different spot than where we had gone out, and it was a nightmare struggling through the abatis. I was scared to death I was going to get shot through the head at any second, but miraculously I made it through undetected. The fires were burning bright in the night, and there was a bizarre busyness in the city, but it was not as I expected.

We had been told to prepare for an attack. But when I rejoined my company, I found them painting logs black with tar. The hospital was being emptied out of all the sick and wounded, toted in cotton stretchers down to the train tracks. When the Mobile train rolled in, everyone cheered as loud as they could, but the train was empty. The Parrott rifles fired off a few rounds, and then they started loading everything onto the cars: artillery, supplies, the wounded, all the while the bugles and drums blared and rolled. As they moved the field pieces from the front lines, they replaced them with the dummy log guns. After the train had been packed to the gills with all it could carry, it departed, and the rest of the army fell in and slipped out the back door of Corinth. As I marched with the others out of that city, I knew I had passed up my one chance to get away. And I probably would not live to get another. We marched all night. On the third day out of Corinth, we entered Tupelo.

We spent that summer licking our wounds in Tupelo, Mississippi. Then in September we finally received orders to move out and march north to rendezvous with some of Bragg’s bunch. We thought we were going to Tennessee, but when we reached Iuka, we found Yankees. They were sitting on a supply depot like jealous wasps guarding their nest. When they saw we outnumbered them, they got frantic, and in the early hours of the morning while it was still dark, they set fire to their supplies and took off. We raced in and fought the flames until the sun came up with smoke rising into the morning sky. Once we got the fires out, we reaped a harvest of Union supplies: hundreds of rifled muskets, cases of ammunition, blue jackets and trousers, black leather belts and brogans, canvas tents, wool blankets, steel canteens and coffee boilers, and a mountain of hardtack and cured bacon. I finally got a pair of britches that fit me, and we all got new shoes that day.

Four days later the Yankees came back, this time in full force. They were pissed, and demanded our surrender which we flatly refused. About mid-afternoon the battle began right outside of town at some crossroads. In spite of hell, one of our regiments managed to run off their gunners and take possession of all the Union artillery guns. Unfortunately they couldn’t move them because all the horses had been killed. While they were fighting, I was busy with a few others trying to load up as many supplies as possible, especially shoes since those were always in high demand. The ferocity lasted until after dark, and in the night, just as we had done at Corinth, we slipped out of town abandoning most of what we had gained but hadn’t used.

Two weeks after Iuka, we found ourselves standing once again before the crossroads of Corinth, only this time we were the attackers and the Yankees had gone down into the rifle pits that we had dug months earlier.

I never could keep track of who was running things. People go missing during an engagement, they get wounded or killed, and then the rest gets thrown in with some other regiment in some other brigade under the command of some fellow you never heard of. We had fled Iuka and marched fifty miles east to Ripley where we combined with the army of West Tennessee. Then all together we marched on Corinth. I figured it would be better to just let the Yankees sit there and get sick like we did, but apparently the railroads were too important to let go, so here we were.

It was the first week of October, but it was still hot, and there wasn’t much shade. There were thousands of us slowly massing around the outskirts of the city in column formation preparing for a major attack. It was a sight to see. However, we knew there were thousands of them as well, and more than likely they outnumbered us.

That first day it was so hot, I was sweating like a mule and panting like a dog. We quickly drank up all our water. The artillery opened up on the Union lines at about ten in the morning, and they kept at it, sending in regiment after regiment all day long until we overran the rifle pits, and the Yankees started falling back. We pushed them back for probably a mile. I was about to pass out from the heat. Most everybody’s canteen was empty, and if it wasn’t, it had only a few sips of hot water in it. The Yankees had constructed some earthworks closer to the city, and these they fled to after they abandoned our old trenches. Everyone was suffering exhaustion from the heat, plus it was getting dark, so they called it a day. We had captured a couple pieces of their artillery, and these were added to a battery of our own.

That night we slept on the ground only a few hundred yards from their earthworks. We were roused in the middle of the night, and around four o’clock in the morning our artillery opened up on the Union inner line of entrenchments. That definitely woke us out of being half-asleep. This kept on until the sun came up. After the guns fell silent, though, for some reason nothing happened for a couple hours, so we ate our breakfast as the sun climbed into the morning sky. Finally the bugle sounded to deploy.

I watched the division to my left form lines in the trees. They started marching across the open field towards the Union earthworks. It was kind of unreal looking at them from a distance as they marched into the face of fire, having holes blown in their ranks. You could hear the groan as they absorbed the artillery shot and canister, and then the pops of musket fire; the column of companies constantly moving forward through the clouds of smoke leaving a scattered trail of still bodies in their wake.

Then it was our turn. I rose with dread as the bugle called for my regiment to form lines. The colonel addressed us in a raised voice above the noise of artillery fire, and pointed to a small nest of Union cannons. “See that battery? That’s where y’all are going. Capture that battery.”

The impact from the shells shook the ground underneath my feet as we marched in line towards the Yankee rifles. I fell down a couple times, but got back up. Then the bullets started whistling by. It was getting hard to see as we marched right into a deathly cloud of bullet-ridden smoke. I think we were all gritting our teeth. Suddenly we were right on them, crashing over the limbs of the abatis. Our artillery had partially shattered it, but it still slowed us down. The marching rows behind starting catching up, and I felt the crowd behind me forcing my line forward and through the rough branches. It was deafening. I fell flat on my face on top of dead tree limbs. Shoes and feet stomped over me and on my back as the yells climbed up the smoky mound into the Yankee artillery nest. It took a minute to gain the will to rise up out of the debris. And I climbed up and over the wall of the redoubt.

It was total melee. Everyone was slashing and hitting each other, bashing with rifle butts, whacking with muskets. I was a little addled. A Yankee soldier rammed into me and pinned me against the inside wall with his musket. He was pressing it across my throat choking me. I wrapped my hand around his fist that gripped one end of his musket, and it started. I could feel him weakening and grunting as the pressure on me slackened. After several seconds he dropped to his knees and I pushed him off as I gasped for breath. The smoke made me cough. Another one came at me. This one tried to jab me with a large knife, but I caught his arm with surprising strength. We wrassled over the knife, and I finally drove it into the ground and slung him off me. I grabbed a third Yankee from behind as he fought with someone else. I held the sides of his face until he passed out. I was starting to feel stronger, but suddenly I realized we were retreating. I hadn’t heard the bugle. When I looked around me, I saw mostly dark blue coats, at least on the bodies still standing. I panicked and scrambled out of there.

Just then an explosion went off knocking me off my feet. My senses turned fuzzy. I remember the ringing in my ears. I lay on my back on the dirt, blanketed by smoke, my head swimming. There were other soldiers lying on the ground near me, some of them still alive. From there I seemed to slip in and out for a few minutes. I don’t know how, but there must have been another assault, because when I came to, I was back behind Confederate lines, though I felt like hell and the battle was behind me.

I was transported by train with other soldiers. We were given time for convalescence. As I understood it, things had not gone too well at Corinth. The Union was making inroads into Mississippi, and the Southern troops were demoralized. There was something that kept bothering me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But I kept trying to remember. I hadn’t been feeling quite myself. I had received a furlough pass, and was supposed to be making my way back home. But there was something I needed to do first.

The train ride was odd. For one thing, I was all alone. It was like everyone else had gotten off somewhere back and I was the last person left. Before the train reached its final destination, it made an unscheduled stop on the tracks. I sat for a couple minutes waiting for it to start again, but it never moved. Curiously, I got up out of my seat and poked my head out of the car. There was nothing and nobody there. I went back to my seat and sat for a few more minutes before putting my gloves on and hopping off. Walking past the locomotive, I saw why the train had stopped prematurely. The tracks had been destroyed, but there was no conductor or engineer. I had to walk a mile along damaged tracks. As I entered Jackson, Mississippi, my eyes met an eerie unpopulated town. There weren’t any horses or mules, or even a stray dog. I was greeted by an empty station with a lonely platform of loose litter and paper but ne’er a soul. The seats inside the station were all empty; and no one behind the ticket counter.

I wandered down the littered street. The city was a wreck. Government buildings and foundries had been burned leaving smoldering ruins and stand-alone chimneys. But there were no bodies. Then a couple blocks from the station I saw something that alarmed me. Above the capitol flew the Stars and Stripes. And I was unarmed and dressed in a faded gray uniform. As I pondered my plight, I noticed the five-story brick hotel right next door to the capitol. I walked up to the building and read the name on the front: Bowman House.

The moment I set foot inside, my ears were met by rich piano music. Cautious as a cat I followed the music across the reception area past an abandoned front desk. The sitting room was in the back. The notes grew louder. I was careful with my steps as I went down the hall. I slid my gloves off and held them bunched in one hand. And then I came to the doorway and slowly entered.

There were two people in the sitting room. The woman was seated with her back to me trilling at the piano. She had obviously had lessons because she played flawlessly. Across from her sat a middle-aged man in an armchair quite absorbed in the music. He was savoring the melody, swaying his hand and fingers with the notes, and above his hand in the air danced a curious light of varying colors. I forgot myself and approached them, intrigued by the dancing light. As I came closer, the man looked up from the chair.

“Ahh, you’re back.” He smiled. “Have a nice trip?”

I was a little confused. “Yes.” The piano music stopped, and a few seconds later the colorful light above his hand evanesced. “How do you do that? Is there gas in here?”

“Yes, we do have gas lighting in here,” he said. “But that’s not it.” He seemed satisfied with his answer, and rather relaxed. “Did you get what we need?”

“Need?”

“Yes. Your little errand.”

Just then a second woman came tramping into the sitting room excitedly. She ran up to me like an affectionate dog, all smiles and hopping. “Ooh, he’s back! He’s back! Look who’s here. You see? He made it. All with the same arms and legs.” She giggled insanely and clutched my arm, and I instinctively tried to pull away from her. What struck me was that she was no child. She had to be at least fifty with wild silver hair far past her shoulders. Her eyes had a sparkle, and the happy grin never left her face displaying a stained row of bad teeth. At first I thought she was drunk, but I smelled no liquor on her breath.

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“Oh no,” the man said. “There’s no mistake.”

“He looks well, doesn’t he?” the crazy woman said with a jittery nod.

“Yes, he looks a little healthier than last time. Been eating well in Virginia?”

“I’ve never been to Virginia,” I said confidently.

“Quite a long journey,” he said, ignoring my denial. “A good time to catch up on sleep.”

“A body gets tired when he has a train to catch,” the crazy woman added, grinning with those bad teeth. There was an odd silence after each sentence, as if they were waiting for me to fill in the blanks. As we spoke, another man casually entered the room behind me whom at first I paid little mind to. The attractive woman seated at the piano, I noticed, was still facing forward, listening but not looking. I began to feel a little awkward.

“I’m sorry, but I have to be on my way. I’ve got something I’m—”

“Supposed to do?” the gentleman in the chair said finishing my sentence. It caught me off guard. “Got somewhere you’re supposed to be?”

“Yes,” I said.

He was very sure, as sure as I was. “So you just wandered in here with people you don’t know, and now you’re going to just leave? Without staying for coffee?”

My embarrassment began to show itself in a dry grin of my own. “We’ve never met.”

The crazy woman began to snicker. Then the other three slowly began to laugh with her. I was the butt of a joke, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know whether to get mad or laugh with them. I was utterly bumfuzzled. They laughed for a minute, and then the woman at the piano turned partially toward us.

“Mrs. August, if you would?”

The crazy woman stood in front of me. She put her hand up, and started to touch me on the forehead with her finger.

“Wait,” the gentleman said. “I’d like to hear it from the boy.” He offered me a seat. And he leaned on his chair’s arm, and studied me closely. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he squinted at me, and he had a full head of brown hair. “Now, tell me where you’re going,” he said. I was a little dodgy, but he picked up on it. “You said you had somewhere to go. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Well…” I actually didn’t. I suddenly realized I didn’t know.

He glanced at the crazy woman, and then back to me. “How about who am I? What’s my name?”

I thought quietly for a minute while the others waited. I couldn’t come up with anything. The woman at the piano grew slightly impatient. “Frank,” she said.

“I want to hear it from him,” he said firmly. Then back to me, “What’s my name? My full name and rank.”

My memory stretched and my eyes grew distant. Slowly I said, “General Francis Blair.”

He nodded. “Good. And what is her name?” he asked motioning to the woman at the piano. I looked at her, and only then noticed she was blind. She wore a pair of dark eyeglasses with a blindfold underneath. She was very pretty, and dressed in the latest fashion. Even the blindfold and spectacles were so arranged it was obvious that extra care had been given to make certain of a neat and attractive appearance.

“Irene,” I said.

“That’s right,” Frank said.

The crazy woman grabbed my arm unable to contain her excitement. “And me! Me! Who am I?”

I tried to pull my arm away, but she struggled with me, and in the process we wound up with our bare hands in a grip. Suddenly I realized she wasn’t passing out. Though I was holding her hands tight, I felt no strength coming out of her, and she only stood there smiling.

She laughed, “Ahahaha! That’s right, we can hold hands. You can’t hurt me. No.” She stroked my bare hand with hers like she were petting a small dog.

“What have y’all done to me?” I said.

Frank regained my attention. “Tell me when we last met.”

I thought long and hard. I couldn’t remember.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened after Corinth?” he suggested. “Do you remember Corinth?”

“Yes. I was there. The city was lost. And we fled. Then we came back, and tried to retake the city. But…” They were very quiet listening to me slowly relate the tale. “…I was captured. I was captured at Corinth. They put us on trains and sent us north as prisoners of war. It was cold. I was freezing to death. And hungry. They punished us by not giving us food.” I looked up and gazed at the younger man standing behind Frank. “He was there,” I said brusquely. “He was at the prison. He was the doctor. He was killing us slowly with his poisons.” The man behind Frank smiled wickedly. He was very pale with dark hair, and he wore a wool suit of somber hue. Frank cast a careless glance at him, and I continued.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. I escaped. From the prison. I was running away. And…and…” My memory suddenly relapsed, and I struggled in vain to remember more. It was just blank. I knew there was something there, but I couldn’t pull it from my mind. Frank relented, and he nodded at the crazy woman. She came softly to me, and placed a cold bony finger between my eyes.

“Remember,” she chanted in her queer shrill voice. “Remember. Remember. Remember….”

 

                                                                                                       ~*~

 

At first, they gave us blankets. And then, if we committed the smallest infraction, they took it away, leaving us to lie in a shivering sleep on pallets of straw. The guards, typical barbarous brutes, always demeaning, all the time talking to the prisoners worse than animals. The place used to be a college of some sort, that’s what I was told. It was made of brick with two wings and three stories. And they crowded us in by the hundreds and locked us up in the strongrooms. Here we wasted away with pneumonia and small pox, sitting in filth, breathing stench. The days tended to merge into one another. Weeks can turn into months easy.

There were some mouse holes; small overlooked places where a body might be able to squeeze through. Of course, if they caught you trying to escape, you’d find yourself at the end of a rope. I had heard rumors of sympathizers, people who might help out a prisoner if he managed to make it out. After that, he could work his way south. I didn’t care, as long as I didn’t have to be under somebody else’s thumb anymore.

I decided to risk it.

I almost broke my leg trying to get down to the ground from the third story. The streets and alleys were patrolled by soldiers, so once I cleared the perimeter, I had to act fast. Even in the dark of night I was glimpsed. And as the guards hunted around with raised lanterns and revolvers, I wound up climbing through the window of a house not two blocks from the prison.

The lights were out and it was very still, so they were either fast asleep or not at home. I crept blindly around furniture, stumping my toe and seeking the larder. I found some cold pie that turned out to have meat instead of fruit, but I gobbled it down and then drank from a water pitcher. Figuring I had better leave before someone woke up, I was wandering back into the main room when I heard the low rub of a bow across a cello.

My head turned just as a flash of light burst in my eyes, and I fell over blinded. I hit my head on something going down, and I lay on my back stunned as footsteps closed in on me. I heard male and female voices stammering with indignation.

What is it!? I got him. Who is he? Well, look here, just a boy. Little thief!

I was yanked up off the floor and forced into a hard chair while my sight slowly returned to me. I kept expecting another blow to the head, but it never came.

The male voice spoke with authority. “He’s from the prison. Get the police.”

“Wait,” a female voice said. There was a pause. “Send for the doctor. At the prison.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

I heard shuffling and the door open and close. Then the same female voice spoke again, “Ugh, god, he smells.” I heard footsteps leaving the room. I was woozy as I sat in the chair, but gradually my eyes took focus. The room was lit, and was finely furnished. I saw the man sitting on the sofa across from me. He was middle-aged with short cut brown hair and a scraggly beard with a streak of gray in it. He did not have a friendly look on his face. He was still in his nightshirt, and he stared hard at me in silence for several minutes. I could almost see an angry flicker of light in the pupils of his eyes. I couldn’t handle meeting his stare so I looked about the room. I noticed the cello leaning over in the corner. Finally the front door opened, and a woman came in. She closed the door and twirled around with a grin.

“He’s coming.” She was at least the man’s age, probably older, but she moved about with the energy of a kid. She was wearing a rumpled dress with black scuffed boots, and her silver hair was wild and frizzy like she hadn’t brushed it in days or even weeks. She looked like someone who had recently escaped from a mental asylum. She circled me like an animal of prey, studying me with a deep curiosity. She smelled like camphor. I looked at the man.

“Can I use the privy?”

“No.”

We waited several more minutes.

When the door opened again, the prison doctor came in. I recoiled at the sight of him for he had been doing horrible things to people in the prison. Anyone who became sick and asked for the doctor got taken to the dispensary and given tonics from his vast medicine chest. Within minutes they would be foaming at the mouth or screaming in pain clutching their belly. Within hours they were dead and being toted out to the wagon.

The doctor closed the door and took one look at me. “Ahh, there you are. I was afraid we had lost you. Naughty, naughty,” he said wagging his finger. He looked over at the man on the sofa. “This one’s a little different.”

“Different? He looks like the typical Johnny reb to me.”

“What happened?”

“He broke in about half an hour ago and helped himself to our food.”

“Well, it’s good that you caught him. Otherwise he might have been shot in the street.”

“And what loss would that have been?”

Their conversation paused, and in came the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Of course, she would be a Yankee. She was blonde, and she had put on a low-cut dress revealing just a teasing bit of cleavage. I immediately noticed she was blind because she wore a thin pair of eyeglasses over a black blindfold covering both her eyes. Her skin was flawless and fair, white enough for many a Southern belle to envy. The man on the sofa stood up at her entrance and led her to the sofa where she sat down. I immediately recognized the female voice from before when she spoke. “Doctor, thank you for coming out this evening.”

“Not at all. I was just thanking the general for recovering this little slaver.”

“I never owned no slaves,” I said.

“Quiet,” the older man barked. “You speak when spoken to.” He looked back at the doctor. “Irene was the one who sent for you.”

“You should listen to what he has to say,” the blind woman said. She had a handkerchief that she held to her nose off and on. The general sat down and folded his hands.

“I’m listening.”

The doctor smiled at him with satisfaction. “I think we’ve found another one.”

There was a curious silence between them. Then the general pointed at me in disbelief. “Him?” He stood back up. “I don’t believe it. Are you sure?”

“Positive,” the doctor said.

The general wandered back over to where I sat. “Are you telling me that this filthy Confederate stripling is—” he started to grab me, but the doctor snatched the general’s arm.

“Don’t touch him!”

The doctor calmed himself and released his arm, and the general studied me silently with misgivings. There was a knock at the door. The general answered it, and I could see three Union soldiers standing outside in the dark. He let them come in, and the ranking officer saluted. He stood about six feet tall with a beefy chest that tapered down to a slim waist. His shoulders and muscles packed the navy blue coat he wore, especially when he crossed his arms. But he was kind of hairy and primal-looking with mutton chops that spread down to a bearded chin, and he had flared nostrils that never relaxed. I remembered pictures I had seen in school of apes and monkeys. I was almost taken by surprise when he spoke in perfect English. “General. We heard you had a break in.” He glanced contemptuously at me. “Is this the culprit?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right, sir?” He seemed to ask as a matter of courtesy.

“Of course I’m all right.”

The officer looked at the beautiful blind woman. “Miss Adler. This little brute didn’t try anything, did he?”

“Only to our leftovers,” she said peevishly.

“We’ll take him back to the prison immediately.”

The general glanced at Miss Adler. “Uh, not just yet. Why don’t you stay a minute. The doctor was just sharing some important information with us. I’d like you to hear it.”

The officer dismissed the other two soldiers, and they shut the door. Then the general fetched his military coat and put it on. He looked more like a politician than a general, from his slim build to his unrigid gait. But he had the general’s bars on his long coat of dark Union blue. He was just a tad taller than the officer. “All the effort I’ve put in from removing the arsenal to securing the legislature against the hellish workings of supporters of this rebellion, and they can’t even hold a few prisoners within one block. Now what is it that you have here?”

“A most interesting anomaly,” the doctor said. “I haven’t seen one quite like it before. He is a human parasite.”

“I could have told you that. Does he have a name?” They looked at me, and the general repeated the question. “What is your name?”

I was hesitant, but the doctor spoke up. “Go on. It’s not like we don’t have it on record at the prison.”

“Abel Owens,” I said.

“Your rank?” demanded the general.

“Private.”

“Where are you from?”

“Miss’ippi.”

The general snorted cynically. I was a little puzzled by him.

“You’re from Missouri?” I asked.

The Union officer accosted me gruffly, “You will address him as General Blair.”

“That’s General Francis Blair,” the general said. “And no, I was born in Kentucky. But I have served the state of Missouri for several years in the House of Representatives and in the preservation of the Union.”

I was quiet a second, then said, “You don’t talk like a Kentuckian.”

A sneer formed on his mouth. “Not all of us are provincial bumpkins barely able to read a road sign. For your information, I attended school in Washington, and graduated at Princeton.”

I was getting bored.

The crazy woman spoke up, “Maybe the young man would like to give a demonstration? A little eye charity. I can read you like an open book.”

“What’s going on?” the officer asked.

“That’s what the doctor was telling us when you came knocking,” Blair said. “It appears we’ve found another one.”

The officer looked at me mildly confused. “What does he, uh, do?”

“Why don’t you have Caleb call in one of his men,” the doctor suggested, “and I’ll show you.”

Blair nodded at the officer. “Call in one of your men.”

“Just one,” said the doctor. “I’d pick the one you like least.”

Caleb grimaced at the doctor, and disappeared out the door. He returned less than a minute later with another Union soldier. “You better not be wasting our time.”

The doctor became derisive. “I’m not wasting time. Not like you and your petty antics on the battlefield.” He turned to the other soldier. “Why don’t you help us out and take the boy by the wrist.” The soldier looked at Caleb.

“Go on,” Caleb said. “Do as he says.”

I eyed the soldier uneasily as he came near me. He calmly reached down with his bare hand and grabbed me around the wrist as I sat in the chair. For a strained moment I concentrated on not letting it happen, like when I had to pee very badly but didn’t have the opportunity. For several seconds nothing happened.

“He’s trying to control it,” Miss Adler said from across the room. Her words caught me off guard, and before I realized it, rivulets were forming on the soldier’s forearm and face. He grunted and began to tremble. I felt his strength seeping into my arm, somewhat like swallowing hot soup and feeling it flowing down your throat and into your stomach, becoming a part of you. He shook violently, and then his knees buckled and he collapsed on the floor. He lay there at my feet unconscious and breathing in a whisper. The others, except for Miss Adler, watched in silence.

General Blair paced the floor. “Hmm. Interesting.” I made a point not to make eye contact. Finally Blair asked the doctor, “How did you discover this?”

“Quite by accident. I had laid some of the goners out in the back room. I always like to run a few tests before they stop breathing entirely. As usual, I had them stripped of all their clothing. Our friend here was one of them.”

“And?”

“We are quite overcrowded next door, as you know. They were lying side by side, shoulder to shoulder. I left the room for a few minutes, and when I returned the man lying next to him was dead. Of course I thought nothing of it. I removed the body and some time later replaced it with another specimen which was hanging on more dearly to life, and I laid him next to the boy. The same thing happened. Sudden death, yet the boy still alive. That sparked my curiosity. There were other men in the same room, yet they did not die like the one lying right next to him. I thought he might be spreading a disease. So I placed a third man on the table next to the boy, though I failed to leave them actually touching. I waited two hours and nothing happened. Disappointed, I almost chalked it up to coincidence. But then I edged them a little closer so that their arms and shoulders were touching. I was amazed at the almost immediate reaction. I actually watched the boy’s body absorb the life out of the other prisoner!”

“Did you say absorb?”

“Indeed. He manifests clear signs of increased vitality in conjunction with the deterioration of his…host. The boy was half dead when he first came to me.”

Blair looked down at the Union soldier on the floor. “He’s not dead.”

“I noticed that. It appears that only prolonged skin contact leads to coma and eventual death. I’ll keep an eye on the soldier to see if he recovers.”

“Did you touch the boy yourself?”

The doctor gave the general a knowing look. “Not long enough to make a difference.”

The hairy officer Caleb sauntered over behind me. “So what you’re saying is, we can touch him through his clothes, just not his skin.”

“There must be direct skin contact for the reaction to take place,” the doctor stated.

“And I can slap him in the back of the head, and it won’t hurt me?”

The crazy woman snickered and held her claws up. “Be a good boy, and it won’t hurt a bit.”

They stood and studied me. Blair said, “So the question now is what do we do with him?”

“I’d like to run a few more invasive tests on him,” the doctor said. “Perhaps you could arrange him to be moved to the Alton prison. There’s tighter security there, and I have better lab facilities.”

“Perhaps.”

At that I started to bolt from the chair, but Caleb standing behind me had quicker reflexes. He shoved me back down into the chair. “Sit!”

“It seems our guest is getting restless.”

Miss Adler spoke up, “A word, please. Frank.” Blair went over to where she was sitting and leaned down, and she whispered to him. It wasn’t hard to stare at her, even with that blindfold on. She was very refined and proper; a real high-class lady. I kept racking my brain on how she could possibly know that I was “trying to control it.” I wondered if she had been blind her whole life. They finished their whispering, and Blair walked back over to the doctor.

Then Miss Adler turned her head in my direction and said, “And in answer to your question, no.”

“No what?” Blair asked.

“Private Owens is wondering if I was born blind.”

My mouth fell open. I was floored. Could I have possibly spoken without thinking and not realized it?

“Oh, no dear,” she said. “You haven’t said a word. Not with your mouth, at least. You actually have a very loud voice.”

I began to stammer.

Miss Adler leaned forward on the sofa. “Did you think you were the only one in the world with special gifts?” she asked slyly. Then I heard her voice, but not from her mouth because her mouth was closed. It was like hearing my thinking voice in my head, except it was her voice: I see you for what you are, Abel Owens. Thief. Liar. Rogue.

I started to sweat. My hands trembled. I felt very vulnerable, as if I were standing in public in nothing but my underwear. Blair must have noticed because he spoke up. “Irene, you’re not scaring the boy, are you?”

Miss Adler leaned back to an upright seated position. “Just establishing who’s in charge.”

Blair rubbed his mouth with the side of his finger thoughtfully. “I’m sending him back to the prison for tonight. We’ll discuss it further tomorrow. No tests,” he said firmly to the doctor.

The doctor quietly went out in a huff leaving the door open. Caleb grabbed me under my arm and shirtsleeves so that I stood up. Blair spoke to him in a lowered voice.

“Put him in the best strongroom they have over there. I want you to personally keep an eye on him. Don’t let anything happen to him, and do not let him escape again.”

“Yes sir,” Caleb said. He marched me out of the house and into the dark street, and we walked back to the prison together with four military guards. He actually ordered them to keep their distance from me. They gave me a room on the third story all to myself, clearing the other prisoners out just for me. The windows were barred, and whenever I looked out there was an armed guard on the ground below. It was cold, but I raked together all the straw in the room to make a large pallet on the floor to sleep on.

I stayed in the room the whole next day and the following night. The door only opened twice for meals. Both times it was Caleb. He said nothing to me, only eyed me warily for a second before locking me back in.

The day after that, it was late morning before the door opened. It was the crazy woman this time. She came in and the door closed behind her, and I heard it lock from the other side. She was holding a plate of scraps for me with a twisted grin on her face. I waited for her to say something, but it seemed she was doing the same.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Why? Why, to bring you your vittles. Growing boy.” She giggled.

“I’m grown.”

She kind of skipped over to me almost dropping the food from the plate. I was sitting on my pile of hay and she stood just out of arm’s reach of me. She leaned down a little. “Want to sit up, boy? Sit up and beg, and mama’ll give you a treat!” she said in a frightening voice. I didn’t know what to say to her. She held the plate out for me to take, but when I reached for it, she kept pulling it back, teasing me with the food. She was getting a good laugh out of it. Finally she tilted the plate and let the food fall on the filthy floor where prisoners walked, spit, and pissed, and mice scurried in the night.

“Get out!” I said.

“Not gettin’ angry, are we? You gonna be a good boy? Don’t pee on the rug or we’ll have to beat ya.” She started barking at me like a dog. I knew she was deranged, I just didn’t know what she was up to.

“Stop it!”

She started to grab me, but then thought twice. “You’re a hot one. Too hot to touch. Nobody can touch you, can they? Can they? Oh—” she started poking at me with her finger, first my clothes, then my head with the tip of her finger just a split second at a time. She was starting to make me mad. We were squabbling in raised voices, and I expected the guards to come in at any second, but they didn’t. She accidentally poked me in the eye, and I hollered and held my hand over it. For a minute I lost it, and I jumped up to strike her, but instead I grabbed her head with both my hands. I had my thumbs over her eyes, waiting for that sensation when her life would start seeping out of her and into my hands and arms. I wanted to watch her shake and tremble like the others, fall and hit the floor, knocking herself unconscious. We stood there as the seconds passed, and nothing happened. Ten seconds. Fifteen. I felt nothing. Suddenly she spoke,

“I killed him. I killed him. I’m cursed! I’m cursed!”

I let go of her. She stood there in a trance mumbling like she had no knowledge of where she was or that I was in the room with her. It startled me, and I backed against the wall.

“Guard!” I hollered. “Guard!”

A moment later the lock clicked and the door finally opened. Two guards along with Caleb coolly stepped into the room.

“You’re still hot,” she uttered, still in her trance. Caleb took her by the arm and carefully led her out mumbling to herself, and they locked me in alone to ponder my plight. One of the guards poked his head in later that evening to check on me, but he gave me no food. And I worried myself to sleep that night on the hay.

The following day they got me up early for a tepid bath. Afterwards the shackles were put on me, and they escorted me out of the prison. I was surprised when they walked me back to General Blair’s house. The guards remained outside, only Caleb entered with me. Miss Adler was already in the living room patiently sitting like blind people do. We stood there a minute waiting. We could hear them in the other room, Blair and the doctor.

“—I don’t think you quite fully realize the opportunity we’re passing up here. The boy is of no use to you. I urge you to reconsider.”

“I’m quite aware of the opportunity. I’m also aware of your questionable methods, doctor.”

“Do you know the probability of another one like him coming along? We’ll not likely get him back. He’ll probably be killed somewhere.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I have been assured of the outcome.”

“Oh, her. Again, I’m to take her word for it. Because she’s always right.”

“She has not been wrong so far in matters such as these.”

“Matters such as these. God! You people. Science is the future, not fortune telling!”

“Your talents have been very helpful to us, doctor,” Blair said firmly. “I urge you not to underestimate ours.”

They came into the living room, and Blair hardly acknowledged my presence. Instead he called for his aide-de-camp while I waited quietly. The doctor stood by frowning at me. I wanted to sit down. I was tired and half starved. I was at the end of my rope. If they were to offer me a pardon, I’d pledge loyalty to the Union. I didn’t care. Just so long as I could get out of that prison and have some decent food.

When the aide arrived, Blair asked him, “Have you heard back from our source in the Democrat camp?”

“Not yet, sir. His last wire expressed doubts of Seymour taking our offer seriously. I think he’s ignoring us.”

“Well, maybe the Irish Brigade would like to fight barefoot. I hear some of the Confederates are doing that. Double the price of shoes with our suppliers. See how they like that offer.”

“Yes sir.”

“And the carbine expenditures?

“The funds came through, and the carbines are being delivered to the cavalry.”

“Excellent. Appropriate Burnside’s share to his account. And write a letter to the general commending him on 38 and taking care of Vallandigham. Dissent against the president will not be tolerated.”

“Very good, sir.”

Blair was quiet a moment pondering. “Any purchasing orders from the Mountain Department?”

The aide chuckled skeptically. “I can write a letter to Fremont if you wish.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. That’ll be all for now.”

The aide left. Then Blair, looking down at his documents, said, “I’ll have Mrs. August pay the quartermaster a visit. It would be a shame if he forgot to include percussion caps in the munitions supply to the Mountain Department army.”

I was floored. It must have showed on my face so that a blind man could see it because I watched a sinful grin spread across Miss Adler’s face. And those pretty white teeth shined beneath the blindfold and spectacles.

“I do think you’ve offended our young noble guest,” she said. Blair scoffed. Miss Adler turned her head towards me. “You’ve spent your whole life committing petty thievery against your fellow man, and now you’re judging us for war profiteering.”

“I would have figured he wanted a stake in the game,” Blair said. “You do like games, don’t you, boy? If you can make a few cents off the dollar. Thieving rascal.”

“You don’t know nothin’ about me,” I said.

“Oh, we know plenty,” Miss Adler retorted. “Mrs. August has told us all about you.”

“I don’t know any Miziz August.”

“You should,” Caleb said. “She fed you your last meal in the prison.”

“The crazy old lady?”

“Eccentric,” Blair concurred. “She has her abilities, though. A spell of amnesia can come in quite useful at times, as can reading memories.” He gave a cocky smile, and then mused to himself. “Poor Little Mac. So slow. So forgetful of where he is and what he was supposed to do. It’s no wonder he had to be relieved of command. Seems he’s had a soft spot for Copperheads. Well, now he can rest his head with them in New Jersey.”

“We’re going to amass fabulous wealth by this war,” Miss Adler said. “Oh, of course we want the Union to win, but not before we make a little profit. Everyone thought the war was going to be over in a few weeks. I knew better.”

“Irene is quite the seer,” Blair said. “And she deserves all that money can buy.” He offered her a fond look, and then turned less mirthful. “I’ve spent a fortune fighting this rebellion both in the political arena and in the military outfitting regiments. When this war is won, and I assure you, the Union will win, I will continue my political career. And I’m going to need some financial cushioning.”

Miss Adler turned her head towards him sweetly. “You’ll have your cushioning, darling. Your own little pile of gold to sit on.”

I looked up at Caleb. He raised his eyebrows at me with a tight smile. I sat there a little dumbfounded but with my interest piqued. Somehow my dishonest nature wasn’t following up. I wanted to speak up. I was waiting for them to make an offer. Oh yes sir, madam. I know a thing or two about skimming off the top, selling under the table. You came to the right man. I could help you. Anything for a dollar. Why, I never asked to be in this war. How would it hurt to make a little profit off of it. I got loyalty to none.

But they didn’t make an offer. They sat there dismissive of my silent willingness. And the bottom fell out of my wagon of worthlessness, and I was just sitting there on the seat stunned and silent.

“You had no idea what you were getting into when you climbed through that window, did you?” Blair said ominously.

I still wasn’t answering. Caleb chuckled. “Johnny reb,” he uttered with a smirk.

“To think,” Blair said, “the evolution of our species manifesting itself in a semiliterate hick from the backward South. What a waste.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Caleb said shaking his head.

Blair sighed. “It pains me to do this, but I’m going to arrange for a prisoner exchange for Private Abel Owens.”

At that, the doctor stomped out of the house slamming the door behind him. Blair ignored him. “Let’s go ahead and take those shackles off. After all, Private Owens is one of us now, isn’t he?”

They fed me well after that. Two days later I was on a train heading back to the Confederacy. I was mildly disappointed. I didn’t know it at first, but I wasn’t going back to Mississippi. It was a very long ride. There were some other Confederate prisoners who were being exchanged along with me. When we finally reached our destination, we were in Virginia.

We were so ragged when we arrived, we must have struck some sympathy because one of the ladies societies sewed some new gray uniforms for us. After being reoutfitted, if that’s what you want to call it, I was placed in a different brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia; however, all the boys and men in that unit were from Mississippi. They were all new faces. It was called Barksdale’s Brigade, and they were stationed in Fredericksburg, an ordinary town set by a river and a series of hills and ridges around. I had never seen Virginia before. Spring was just around the corner, and it was raining most of the time. But when the rain stopped, and the sun came out, for a brief crisp moment it was beautiful. It was during this interval from fighting that I saw the new Confederate battle flag for the first time. They had changed the Stars and Bars since that one apparently looked too much like the United States flag. This new flag was red with a blue X and the thirteen stars of the Confederacy, though I didn’t quite understand how that all added up since only eleven states had seceded.

One day during drill I saw the oddest general I had laid eyes on, north or south, since the war began. He was riding a small chestnut horse across the field. The stirrups were too short for his legs so that his knees came up high, and his boot heels stuck out from the horse’s sides with his toes pointing in. His back was ramrod straight and his upper body wobbled awkwardly with the trot of the horse. On his head he wore a gray cap pulled down low over his eyes almost to his nose.

“Reckon who that is?” I asked another soldier.

“You don’t know your commandin’ officer?” the fellow answered. “That’s Ole Blue Lights.”

It turned out Old Blue Lights was rather famous, though I had never heard of him. General Jackson was his name. Most men called him Stonewall. He had saved the town of Fredericksburg the year before, and he was Lee’s right-hand man. He would stand in place for hours at a time with his left arm raised, palm face out. I thought he was calling on the Lord, but a sergeant corrected me and said he was getting his blood circ’lating, and not to disturb him.

In April folks were getting restless. The Yankees were on the northeast side of the river. They had tried to cross it more than once. Rumor was that they were going to try it again. My regiment was stationed down river from town. On the first of May early in the morning while it was still dark, we all packed up and moved out.

We didn’t follow the river, but swung away from the town and out of view along narrow country roads where the line of marching columns spread far out to either side of the road. It was a massive movement of the corps, thousands with General Stonewall riding along with us on horseback. He had a bad habit of riding off by himself to take in a view or something that caught his attention. At times he would be way off at the front, and then later far back where I was in the rear of the marching columns, or he might disappear completely for a whole hour. I even heard one or two of his subordinate officers reprove him for taking unnecessary risks. But the composed general would always brush it off with a Bible verse: “Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” By the end of the day, we had marched several miles and not seen much of anything but a little church. We finally came to a stop by one of the ridges and camped there for the night blocking the road.

The next morning we did the same thing, marching several miles along circuitous roads. We entered thick woods and pressed deeper into forested wilderness. The sun shone down through the branches new with green-gold buds. The air was cool and fresh. It was a nature hike. I was actually enjoying it. Stonewall rode nearby on his little horse. We came upon a crossroads in the woods where an old stone furnace stood alone off the side of the road. As we were marching past it, a bullet struck the head of a man near me.

He dropped like a tow sack of potatoes. Of course everyone started looking every which way readying their weapons. Suddenly a hail of bullets hit my company, and panic started spreading like fire. Bullets were hitting trees, rocks, dirt, men. A few bullets struck the ground underneath the general’s mount, and the horse spooked and bucked. Stonewall fell to the ground as the little horse bolted. I saw Yankee sharpshooters in the trees. They were advancing.

I dropped to the ground on my belly and held my cap on my head as I watched my company collapse under fire. They were falling all around me. I had blood splatter on my uniform, and it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t mine. I looked at Stonewall. He was slowly getting up onto his feet. He had the same calm expression on his face as he always did, though his britches were dirtied in the knees. A cluster of Yankees were taking aim at him, and then I watched in awe as he hardened and turned to stone right as they fired the volley. The bullets ricocheted off his body harmlessly. Some of the Yankees loaded and fired again with the same effect. He was a living statue, a roughly hewn likeness of his flesh and blood form, carved out of gray stone, standing defiantly before his enemies in the face of gunfire.

They were as astounded as I was. I could hear the crack of rock as he stiffly raised his arms in the air. Then with both fists together, he pounded the ground sending a tremor that shook the earth beneath us and staggered the Yankees, and they fell down. Dust and pine needles powdered the air. They struggled to get back up. Without moving his feet, Stonewall turned and grasped a moss-covered log that was twice as big around as his upper body and a good twenty feet long. He heaved it slowly off the ground and lifted it over his head as the Yankees were standing up again. Then he hurled it. The flying log mowed them down snapping a couple young trees with it in a terrible crash, and a whole line of them went tumbling down the hill.

A couple Yankee stragglers were late getting to their feet. I got up and walked over to them, placing my hand calmly on the first one’s neck, then the second, sapping their strength till they dropped back to the ground. I felt a renewed vigor flow through my body as my muscles flexed. Then I looked back to Stonewall.

He was still in his rough stone form, his feet planted in that same spot where he had gotten up after falling from his horse. It was just me and him. I could see his stony eyes looking at me. It felt like those paintings with the eyes that follow you no matter where you stand in the room. He knew. Then, just as simply as before, his body turned back to flesh. At that very moment a few officers on horseback and other gray soldiers came running back down the road to us. They called out to him, “General! General Jackson! Are you alright, sir?”

Stonewall broke his stare with me and calmed them. “I’m fine, lieutenant. We just got hit, that’s all. The enemy is broken.”

They started checking the fallen soldiers for life. They also checked the squashed Yankees in the trees, and someone hollered, Good Lord! They brought Stonewall’s horse on the lead rope to him, and the general mounted his Little Sorrel. Since my company had been all but wiped out, I had to join a different one. And we continued down the road four men wide because that’s how narrow the paths were through the woods. We made a couple more turns and passed some unfinished railroad tracks, snacking from our haversacks during the march. It was late afternoon when we came to a stop. We had turned onto a gravel road. Soon the order came down to line up to attack.

For three hours we struggled to get situated, stretching way on out from both sides of the road into the woods and undergrowth. In places it was so thick with vines and briars that you couldn’t even pass or see. Our two battle “lines” were crooked and disorganized as we stomped through the woods with wispy branches smacking us in the face and briars scratching us up. There was cussing up and down the line. The rabbits and foxes scampered at our presence. Within minutes, though, I could see the clearing. There were Yankees out there and they looked like they were sitting down to supper around their camp fires. Their muskets were stacked around their tents. As we came near the edge of the woods, the line starting coming back together. And then it began.

The bugle barely sounded a note before our cringing yell erupted and echoed through the forest. We burst from the wilderness like a screaming flood pouring into the open. Our line was so long that it must have stretched for over a mile. The Union soldiers in their camps started running around wild at the sight of us in the thousands. They quickly formed a skirmish line and managed to get a shot or two off before we rolled right over them. We excitedly started swarming their camps. Food was still cooking over the fires, and we snatched it up on the go. I burnt my tongue on someone else’s supper. Everything was chaos and melee. Some of them tried to stand and fight, but they wound up getting knocked over by their fleeing fellow soldiers. We were chasing them and they were on the run. We covered a lot of ground fast. It was a flanking move. They had dug earthworks and rifle pits, but they were all facing the wrong direction.

This was the kind of war that boys find fun. Some of them were climbing up on top of captured cannons and crowing like roosters, flapping their arms, mocking the Yankees. Unfortunately our fun was short-lived. The sun was going down and there were no more battle lines. We were becoming disorganized and once it was dark, we were totally disorganized. I got lost from my regiment. Union stragglers were intermingled with us all over so that you didn’t even know if the fellow next to you was blue or gray. Some of them hid in their tents wrapped up in their blankets. But others surrendered to us in groups. For a few hours I pretty much just did whatever I wanted. I ate some more, drank some Union coffee, replaced my wooden canteen for a steel one, and found a good blanket that I rolled up and wrapped over my shoulder. I tried to take advantage of the situation by straying as far out as we had advanced. I didn’t want to get captured again, but I wanted to enjoy my freedom for as long as I could.

On the road a group of officers huddled together a short distance from me. I sat down on the ground and watched them for a few minutes hidden from their view. The moon had come out, and it wasn’t full but it was close. I knew one of them was Stonewall because of the way he rode his horse. He had his staff officers on horseback with him and he was talking with an infantry officer of a North Carolina unit. I heard him say in his composed voice, “The danger is all over. I am going out to reconnoiter. You know it’s us when we return.”

Then he rode off with the others leaving a patrol of soldiers on foot. I sat there relaxing for a while, invisible to the patrol, and I almost fell asleep. But in the moonlight there appeared a lone figure in a woman’s shawl and hood walking slowly down the road. The Confederate patrol raised their arms at the mysterious approach of the stranger. But as she came near, she raised her hand and spoke to the officer and his men, and they grew less defensive. At first I thought they knew her. But they acted strange. She stood before them talking in such a low voice, I couldn’t hear. And the men turned slack in their posture letting the butts of their muskets rest in the dirt. They almost looked mesmerized. They stood there like that for a minute, still and quiet, and then the woman turned and started walking back down the road from where she had come. I watched her disappear in the dark. I got up and followed, careful not to be spotted by the patrol. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want to know, but I had to make sure.

As I caught up to the hooded figure, she suddenly stopped in the middle of the road. Her back was to me. I had my musket loaded and I slowly circled her, dreading what I was going to see as I came around face to face.

She had that insane grin on, staring right through me from underneath that hood. Mrs. August.

“You!” I said.

“You haven’t forgotten us, have you, little rogue?” she said in an eerie voice.

“What are you up to?”

“You can’t hurt me. I’m immune to you.”

“I should turn you over as a spy.”

She cackled. She had a voice like a screech owl. “The young man doesn’t want to spy. Keep an eye. Live and die.”

“You’re out of your mind.” I heard hooves behind me. They were at a gallop and coming fast. We jumped to the side of the road and ducked just in time for a small party to race by. It was Stonewall and his staff. I watched them gallop back down the road toward the checkpoint.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. August said with fake concern. “Poor TJ.”

I cut her a look, and then ran back down the road a little ways to see them stopped before the same men of the North Carolina unit. They no longer looked mesmerized, but fully alert and pointing their guns at the men on horseback.

“Halt!” the officer on foot said. “Who goes there?”

“Stonewall Jackson. We’ve returned.”

Mrs. August grabbed me from behind and hissed, “Watch this! It’ll be a laugh!”

“We just left you not an hour ago,” a staff officer said. “Don’t you remember?”

The officer on foot shouted, “It’s a damn Yankee trick!” They opened fire on the men on horseback. Several men fell from their horses. There was frantic hollering and neighing. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“Fire!” Another hail of bullets. I watched in horror as Stonewall fell from his horse. Mrs. August snickered wickedly and I slung her away from me. I kept watching for him to get up, but he didn’t. I was going to run down there, but I feared they’d shoot me, too. When I looked back again, Mrs. August had disappeared. I finally said to hell with it, and took off running down the road to where they were. The men of the checkpoint stood by gaping and horrified at what they had just done. Stonewall lay on the ground face up. Both his arms had blood on them. His right hand had been shot clean through. I knelt down beside him to help, but suddenly I remembered the boy at Corinth, and I pulled my hands back with regret. He lay there looking at me. Even wounded and bleeding, he still maintained much of his composure. He never said a word to me.

It took a long time to get help. When they finally got a stretcher to move him, artillery somewhere had started firing. They dropped him once when a shell hit dangerously close. I spent the rest of the night accompanying the stretcher as they struggled to evacuate him to a safer place. At about five in the morning, a lieutenant ordered me back to the front lines. By six o’clock I was back with my brigade atop Marye’s Heights. I was exhausted. I had gotten no sleep, and just at dawn when I was ready to lay down, the bugle blasted. The Yankees had crossed the river during the night, and now they were arrayed in battle lines in front of the town of Fredericksburg. We could see their columns as the darkness lifted. There were so many of them.

Most of the Confederate army was fighting in the woods, and the line atop Marye’s Heights was rather sparse. We hunkered down behind the stone wall waiting for them to charge it, which they did twice. I thought I was going to die. There was so few of us to man the wall, I don’t know how we managed to repulse them both times. There were dead Union soldiers everywhere. Our faces were blackened from the smoke of battle.

Midmorning a white flag was waved. A truce was called for the Yankees to collect their wounded and dying. We stood by behind the wall while a few of them scoured the hillside with white stretchers and canteens. Some of them came all the way up the hill to gather some of their dying soldiers. It was strange how close we all were. They kept looking at us; looking like they were surprised at how few of us were holding that wall. After the last of the wounded went back down, the battle resumed.

This time they swarmed towards the left flank, which was actually at the center of the wall where there was hardly anyone stationed. We could not beat them back. They started pouring over that stone wall like water, separating us from the other brigade. And at that our whole line started to collapse. I heard the bugle for retreat right as a Union officer hopped over the wall close by me. I’d know that face anywhere. It was Caleb.

He gnashed his teeth at me and pointed a revolver at my face. But instead of shooting me, he turned and shot three other Confederate soldiers. I swung at him with the butt of my musket, but he ducked it. We struggled. I tried to grab his fist, but he jerked it away and punched me in the face, and I saw stars. I felt my musket yanked from my grasp, and it was hurled away. He was very strong and incredibly nimble. He slung me into the wall and when I hit the stones, it took my breath away. Then he kicked me several times with his black leather boots. I tried to get back up on my feet, but he tripped me and I went flying into the rifle pit behind the wall. I was lying face down and I couldn’t get up from the pain.

“Some of that stolen strength starting to wear off?” I heard him say. I rolled over part way and saw him standing over me with several other Union soldiers.

Caleb personally took me prisoner as I watched the Confederates flee southward. He slid a pair of buff leather gauntlets over my hands and then clapped shackles around my wrists to close off the wide cuffs.

“Wriggle out of those, and I’ll chop your hands off,” he said through his teeth.

They quickly took possession of Marye’s Heights and the surrounding area. I got shuffled along with some other prisoners to a confinement area where we were forced to sit in the grass. We were not allowed to stand up except to piss. We could hear the gunfire off in the distance. Sore as I was, I lay down on the ground and fell asleep within a minute. I slept all day because when I woke up, it was already dark. My ribs hurt when I breathed. They were digging earthworks in the night. We could hear the chopping and the shoveling. I went back to sleep and dreamed I was someone else more than once. I woke a little before dawn. It was cold, and all us prisoners were nuzzled up together for warmth. The sun rose slowly casting its rays closer to where we lay until it fell directly on us, warming us at last.

In the light of day we could see the earthworks they had been working on. They were busy blue bees. I finally got them to take the shackles off so that I could take a dump in a hole. But the guard told me to keep the gloves on. I could tell he was following orders. He didn’t seem to see the importance in it. They gave us some water and kept us in that spot. There was whispering among us. The Yankees are hemmed in. That’s why they ha’n’t moved us across the river. This hill is gonna be retaken. Then they’ll be our prisoners.

Around noon they decided to move us. They started herding us down the Plank Road that ran right through their defensive position from Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville. As we were walking, we passed a limber and caisson. The driver was sitting up on the seat with his head turned talking to someone. I wasn’t planning, I just did it without thinking. As I walked by on his blind side, I climbed up onto the two-wheeled carriage and elbowed his head. He went tumbling to the ground as I took his seat, and I slapped the reins on the six horses and they bolted knocking down a few Union soldiers as I peeled out. Most of the muskets were stacked, and I raced by soldiers gawking at me as the horses galloped down the road lined with trees. I rounded a curve with a laugh and glanced behind me, then did a double take because Caleb was chasing me on foot. He was running right behind the carriage, and the horses were at a gallop. He looked pissed. I kept slapping the reins, but he kept up no matter how fast we ran.

Finally he leaped in the air to an amazing height and landed on the caisson carriage behind me. I pulled on the reins and the horses veered to the right causing him to lose his balance, but he didn’t fall off. He got back on his haunches, and I pulled to the left. The horses veered again throwing him to the right. This time he fell, but he hung on with his feet dragging behind the carriage. I dragged him for probably a quarter of a mile before he climbed back up and started moving across the pole to where I was sitting. He was reaching for me when I cut a sharp curve, and it was too much for the wheels. It threw the carriage, and me and Caleb went flying with both limber and caisson. I landed on my back with the crash of ammunition chests and broken wood, and I heard the thud that sounded like Caleb. The horses kept galloping down the road.

I lay there for a minute unable to move. Suddenly a hand grabbed my shirt front and dragged me from where I was lying. He was furious as he hog-tied my hands and feet. He wasn’t even out of breath. He dragged me all the way back down the road without stopping until we got to where the other prisoners were. And there I stayed.

That evening before dark an attack began. Confederate artillery starting shelling the Yankees, and some of those shells were landing pretty close to where we prisoners were sitting. Men were running back and forth, shouting orders and taking positions. Over the roar of artillery fire, the guards started barking and smacking at us to get up and move to a different location. One of our men jumped at a guard and wrestled for his gun. A second guard raised his musket and fired instantly killing him and mortally wounding another prisoner. Then all the prisoners rose up against the guards, jerking their weapons away and striking them brutally in the head. One of the other Confederates, after taking a guard’s knife, came and cut me loose. Then it was every man for himself. Prisoners were scattering everywhere; shells exploding all around. I bumped into a Union soldier, and we both startled each other and ran in opposite directions. As I ran, another soldier tried to tackle me. I slid my hand out of the glove and grabbed his wrist, and he hit me with his free hand a few times before he fell over onto the ground. I felt the vigor as I took off. I didn’t know where I was running to. A bullet whistled past my ear. Suddenly I slid down a sharp slope of dirt into a ditch, and I found myself within a Union breastwork.

Immediately three Yankees turned around, and we all exchanged glances in one intense moment. The one closest to me hollered, “Reb!” and he lunged at me with his musket. He slammed me against the dirt wall as another one rushed to help him, and I raised one leg and caught the second man with the heel of my shoe, and sent him reeling back. The third Yankee raised the butt of his rifle to crack my skull, but I slung the man pushing me over to the side, and he hit his fellow soldier in the back of the head. Then I pounced on the third one and sapped him.

More started coming. One soldier aimed his musket at me, but it misfired. He started reloading as I struggled with two others. I was careful to make skin contact, each time reaching for the face or the hands. There was no need to punch. I just needed a few seconds. Sometimes it took longer than others. I wasn’t sure why. I began to feel a focus, a rush of combined muscle flow through my arms and legs. My reflexes quickened. I was hit in the face several times, but I felt little pain.

The relative ease with which I fought them off astonished me. I had never felt such physical strength. I was able to wrench the muskets right out of their hands. I swung so hard, the muskets broke in two. Someone grabbed me from behind, but I heaved forward and threw him several feet down the ditch into another man reloading. The nice thing about it was that most of them were too absorbed in the heat of battle to take easy notice of what was going on further down the ditch. The Confederate line was making a frontal assault, and all eyes were forward. I snatched a shovel leaning against the wall and started clanging heads. At one point the shovel blade deflected a bullet. I started flipping them like pancakes out of that breastwork, tossing them with the shovel. Up they’d go into the air and land on the ground above. I was swinging wildly, madly. If one fell, I stepped over him and kept pushing. I was working my way down the ditch, pressing them back, crowding them into one another in one chaotic, disorganized commotion. They fought desperately. That whole end of the breastwork was clearing up.

Before I knew it, the Confederate line was pouring over the breastwork and pushing the Union line back. I picked up a Yankee Springfield and took my time loading it watching the whole Union operation crumble. All their preparations and planning had brought them no victory. That night the Yankees crossed back over their pontoon bridges to the other side of the river, and Chancellorsville was ours.

I don’t know what happened to all the other prisoners, but a lot of them I saw later rejoined with the Southern ranks. I was thankful not to go back to a northern prison. Over the course of four days I felt my strength subside to a normal level so that I even struggled to pick up a thirty-two pounder of solid shot. I also received a surprise. The aide of Stonewall Jackson had been hunting high and low for me.

They had moved him to a plantation ten miles south of Fredericksburg. Fortunately, the aide let me ride double on his horse. When I finally reached the old place, Fairfield by name, he wasn’t in the main house, but in some office building on the property. There was a guard posted at the door. I still had the leather gloves and I kept those on, but I took my cap off before entering and went in rather docile because I didn’t know what to expect. His doctor and one of his staff officers were there along with some women nurses and a couple servants. When I told them who I was, one of the women went in to the back room. I heard her ask the general if he was feeling well enough to see the young man he had sent for. I couldn’t hear his reply, but she came out and told me I could go in.

He was very pale, near as white as the sheets, with a sunken face beneath a full beard. There was a bandaged stub where his left arm used to be. And he breathed with difficulty. The sweet odor of chloroform was in the room. I approached his bedside.

“General Jackson, my name is Private Owens. You sent for me, sir.”

He didn’t answer, but simply stared at me for a minute silently. He had some of the bluest eyes I had ever seen. He calmly reached across his chest with his remaining arm and lifted my gloved hand as if to examine it.

“You’re not one of those self-abusers, are you?”

“Sir?”

He let go of my hand and rested his head back. And he looked up at the wall as if pondering some great truth. “We are not of the world. We were chosen out of the world. And for that they will hate us.”

I lowered my voice. “I haven’t told anyone, sir.”

He acted like he didn’t hear me. “God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that. Only that good may endure.”

“Sir, I know who it was. There are others. Others who can do marvelous thangs. I’ve seen them. They’re Yankees.”

“There are those beings that undergo change, and are independent of humans. But while the higher world may be immutable, the natural world is distinguished by mutability.” Then he looked at me and silently waited for my response.

“Uh, I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”

“While the higher world may be immutable, the natural world is distinguished by mutability.”

“I still don’t understand that, sir.”

“Insubordination.”

This wasn’t going well. “I beg your pardon, General. You called me here for somep’n?”

He relaxed a little, and said, “On the road to Chancellorsville, what did you see?”

I glanced behind me to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I saw you pick up a tree and chunk it at the Yankees after you turned to stone.”

“And do you believe seeing is believing?”

“For some. But I already believe.”

“Therefore you see.” He seemed to brighten a bit towards me. “And you go to church faithfully?”

I hummed and hawed.

He looked disappointed. “You were chosen for a reason, Private Owens. You were given a gift, as was I. It is your responsibility to use that gift for more than just your own personal gain. If we do not use those gifts given to us, they shall be taken away and given to another. Do you know the parable of the talents?”

“No—yes, sir. I’ve heard ‘em.”

“Good, then you know.”

I hated to ask, but I had to. “General, I don’t understand how this happened. Why didn’t you change like before?”

“Because my feet were not on the ground.” Suddenly it all made sense. The lack of horsemanship, the foot cavalry, the blood circulation. “And you,” he said, “you could have touched me like you did the enemy on the road.”

I was offended. “I would never do that, sir.”

“I know that now,” he said. I didn’t believe he would ever tell a lie. Not even a white one.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“Take my torch and carry it forth.”

“Alright. I can do that. Where is your torch?”

“Take off your glove,” he said holding his right hand open.

I started shaking my head. “No sir, I can’t do that.”

“I’m giving you an order, soldier. Take my hand and receive my power.”

“I can’t sir.”

“Insubordination,” he blurted.

“I’m afraid of failing,” I said. “I have no right to take your…life.”

He was silent a moment, and I was afraid of what he would say next. But then he uttered in a calm voice, “Never take counsel of your fears. And keep your feet on the ground. You will not fail.” He looked at me then with confidence, knowing full well what I was. “I’m going to expire whether you accept your responsibility or not.”

His open hand was waiting.

I relented and slid my right hand out of the leather gauntlet. And slowly I reached out and we grasped hands in a firm shake. He had a powerful grip. The seconds ticked. I could feel it starting. There was no turning back. His vitality was pouring into my hand and coursing through my veins. Rivulets started forming on his face and neck, running all the way down his right arm. Even in his condition, he had an extraordinary supply of life. And he was giving it all to me in one dose. It kept flowing for nearly a minute. As his vigor dwindled, his lips parted and he inhaled a quivering breath of distress. But then a sweet smile spread across his face as he breathed out, and his tension melted away.

“Let us cross over the river…and rest under the shade of the trees,” he said in a peaceful voice. And with that, he closed his eyes.

His hand slackened and gently slid from mine onto the blanket. I stood for a moment not sure what to do. Suddenly I felt a hurting in my stomach like a stone was in my gut. A monstrous headache appeared out of nowhere. Then my chest stiffened, and I couldn’t breathe. I started to panic. He’s killed me.

I wanted to leave the room, but I couldn’t move. My whole body felt heavy as lead. I looked at my hand. It was changing color. I watched my hand harden and turn to stone before my very eyes. I tried to scream, but nothing came out of my throat. For a few ghastly seconds it stayed that way. Then, just as quickly as if by miracle, it reversed itself and my hand was flesh again. My symptoms went away for a minute. I gasped and caught my breath, and I moved my fingers and held my chest.

The lady poked her head in the doorway, took one look at me and Stonewall, and called for the doctor. He came in the room and checked his breathing and pulse, then softly shook his head. The women covered their mouths and bowed their heads while one of them stopped the clock on the wall. I was still struggling to breathe normal and frantic that I would turn back to stone at any moment. One of the Negra servants put her arm around me in sympathy and said, “Oh honey, come on. You come on. It’s alright. He’s gone. We all loved him.” She walked me out of the room though my joints were stiff and my legs weren’t working too well. I sat in a chair for a minute while they mixed plaster to take his death mask. I knew I couldn’t hold it any longer, so I got out of there.

As I walked across the lawn, my body seized up several times so that I froze in my tracks for a second or two before it let me go. Then I’d walk a few more steps and it would do it again. The guard outside stared at me as I worked my way across the property and down the drive. It took me forever to walk half a mile down the road. My feelings of fear and panic gave way to frustration because I had no control over it. I also had no idea how long it was going to last, and I began to kick myself for letting him do this to me. Then I remembered what he told me. Keep your feet on the ground.

I lay down on the side of the road and raised my feet in the air. Immediately I felt relief. I lay there for a few minutes not once turning to stone. It was completely normal. Of course I got tired of holding my legs up. Realizing I couldn’t just lay there all day, I got up and continued on my way back to Fredericksburg. The symptoms gradually became less frequent, but now and then unexpectedly I would harden up for a moment, then turn back to flesh. I began to learn that I could still see and hear in that form, but moving was next to impossible. Stonewall must have taught himself how over time. I also found I couldn’t breathe while in that form.

Despite all that, I went back to the army and went straight to the field hospital where I feigned sickness. The doctor was a little skeptical considering that I had walked there on my own. But he had me take my shirt off so he could examine me better. After listening to my chest and breathing and looking me over, he concluded that I was in fine health and better head back to camp duty. When I stood up, I had one of my paroxysms in front of him, and he fainted.

I decided to leave but I borrowed a pair of crutches and kept one foot off the ground at all times with the other only touching at the tip of my toes. There were so many injured from the recent battle that I easily blended in with all the wounded and crippled. When I wasn’t moving, I was sitting and staying off my feet. At night, I would keep out of the firelight and see how long I could stand without turning to stone. I found the calmer I was, the longer I could go. If I got upset or frustrated, it would come over me. After nearly a week, I sometimes could hold it back like keeping a belch down.

Finally, I received a furlough pass to go home to Mississippi. I was happy as could be. I even got a ticket for a train ride. It was a civilian train, so there were all kinds of people on board. We headed southeast making stops along the way. It was a very long and exhausting trip. I had to change trains in Chattanooga. So after using the privy, I got on the new train and found a compartment all to myself. I plopped down in the window seat and rested my head back, and I waited for the train to leave the station. For a minute or so, I relaxed. Then I turned my head to look out the window.

Right there pressed up against the glass was a horrible face grinning right at me through the window. It startled the hell out of me. I couldn’t break the stare. Those crooked bad teeth, that wild hair. She was right there, holding me against my will.

Mrs. August.

I could feel my eyes dilating, like she was opening the keyhole to my brain and looking inside. She had her hands plastered up against the glass, too, with those dirty long fingernails like talons.

“Don’t you have something to do?” she screeched through the glass. “Don’t you need to go to Jackson?” Her voice was unreal. “To the Bowman House you will go. You will forget all else, from Corinth unto today. It belongs to me now.”

She cackled and flew from the window swift as a bird. The whistle blew, and the train started to move…

 

                                                                                                       ~*~

 

Mrs. August took her hand away from my head. And in a low voice she uttered, “He remembers.”

I stood there in a stunned silence as the memories of the past several months flooded my mind.

“So,” Blair said, “you ran the gauntlet and came out alive. We knew you’d make it.” He glanced at Irene Adler. “Irene knew.”

I began to murmur under my breath. “How could you have known that…?”

“I told you she was a seer,” he said proudly. “Your path would lead you back here to us. We sent Mrs. August east to keep an eye on you behind enemy lines.”

I was casting hateful looks at Mrs. August. I hissed, “Don’t let her touch me again.”

“She doesn’t have a disease, boy,” said Blair. “All she can do is make you forget things.”

“He’s angry at her,” Irene said. “He blames Mrs. August for the death of General Jackson.”

“Oh, so you got close to the old man.” He took a sip of whiskey in a glass. “That often happens. Soldiers love the general they serve under, while his junior officers despise him.” He leaned on the arm of his chair to look directly at me. “Let me ask you something: Did Mrs. August pull the trigger?” He raised his eyebrows waiting for my answer. All I could do was sit and simmer. My mind was still swirling like a river when the dam is opened.

“She knows what she did,” I uttered.

Blair shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “We can’t change that. But you came through for us. That’s what matters now.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Information, young man. It guides decisions. After that disaster at Chancellorsville, the nation needs victories to give morale to Union troops. Washington is eagerly listening.”

“He has the Stonewall’s knowledge,” Mrs. August said.

Blair smiled and folded his hands. “The great Stonewall Jackson. A cornerstone of military intelligence for the confederacy. A secretive man who kept it all up in his head. You realize how invaluable all that wealth of information on planning, troop strength and movement would be to the United States military? I’d be surprised if I don’t receive a commission.”

“He never told me anythang,” I said objecting. “Why would you think that he would tell me anythang?”

Blair was complacent. “I never said I thought he’d tell you anything. A general wouldn’t entrust a scrap of intelligence to a lowly private, especially one with your reputation.” Then he smiled with hooded eyes. “He did better than that. He passed his perfect memory onto you when you absorbed his vigor from him.”

I felt a terrible sense of dread coming over me. “Whatever knowledge you’re looking for, I don’t have it. I might have gleaned a few random memories from him, but I can’t call it to mind.”

“You don’t have to,” Irene said. Blair looked at Mrs. August. She was grinning again. “Mrs. August can pull those memories from the recesses of your mind.”

“It’s all up here,” Blair said tapping his temple. “You were the perfect spy. Now don’t look so downcast. You said yourself, you never asked to be in this war.”

“I don’t remember sayin’ that.”

“Well, maybe you thought it.”

Just then we heard footsteps walking down the hall towards us, and Caleb in his dark blue uniform appeared in the doorway. I almost jumped.

“The barrels are here,” he said looking at Blair.

“Good.”

“What’s he doing here?” I asked.

“His job,” Blair said. Caleb scowled at me.

“He tried to kill me in Virginia. Was that part of the plan, too?”

“I could have killed you ten times over,” Caleb boasted. “I took you prisoner to keep you alive.” He looked at Blair again. “Did he get the intelligence?”

“Just as predicted,” said Blair. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?” he said getting up from his armchair. He motioned for me to follow. “You can clear your head. And I have something to show you.” He paused for Irene. “Would you like to come along, dear?”

“No, I would not like to come along,” she caviled. “Have me stay in this petty hotel in a backwater town.”

“Well, if you hate being cooped up so much, why don’t you go outside and enjoy the weather,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “I know it’s not New York, but…”

“Don’t patronize me, Frank,” she said irritably. “You know how much I hate being in this provincial country. Hot, humid, the lazy language, the greasy unpalatable food—”

“Stop complaining,” he said cutting her off. “Just shut up for once.” He grabbed his blue coat off the coat rack. “I have to be here, you have to be here. I already explained that. We’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time,” she answered wryly.

Blair, Caleb, me and the doctor walked outside the hotel and down the street towards the depot. I looked at the charred remains of gun carriages and cannon, and the burnt empty lots where once probably stood stables, carpenter and paint shops. Some of the buildings were still smoldering from where the Yankees had set fire to them and left. I didn’t see any dead people. But the life was gone from the town, like it had been choked and left for dead. All the industry that could be used for the war effort had been destroyed, and the trains and track were in shambles. Anything of use like food or medicine had been carried off, and even the capitol had been raped by the invading army. It was clearly meant for more than merely a tactical victory. They had struck a moral blow to the state of Mississippi and the South.

Blair led us to a train that had not been destroyed, and I was surprised to find the tracks under it were still intact. There were several large wooden barrels sitting on the ground near the train cars. “This is our latest investment,” Blair said. The three of them took out neckerchiefs and began folding them in triangular halves, tying them around the bottom half of their faces. Blair handed me a neckerchief. “Cover your nose and mouth.”

While I was doing that, Caleb was tapping the hoops off a barrel end. He slid the hoops off, and with gloves on, he carefully lifted the head lid, and we looked inside. It was full of salted pork. I gave Blair a look of expectation.

“What, you hidin’ stuff in the bottom there?”

“Not quite. We’re not smuggling contraband. All the same, I wouldn’t eat any if I were you. It’s just salted pork. With one tiny added ingredient. A tasteless, odorless poison that cannot be detected and slowly kills its victim. The doctor prepared it for us. It can be sprinkled in with the salt and becomes virtually invisible. We have seven hundred pounds of tainted pork.”

“Musta taken a lot of poison.”

“It’s rather potent,” the doctor said with a knowing look. “A little goes a long way.”

“I suppose you’re going to feed it to Confederate soldiers,” I said.

“No, you’re going to feed it to Confederate soldiers,” Blair said.

“Me?”

“I’ll be putting barrels in with the supply wagons to the US army.”

I looked at him incredulously. “You’re going to kill your own men?”

Blair shook his head with a tiny twinge of guilt. “Of course not. They’ll get deathly sick, but thanks to the good doctor here, we’ll be ready with the antidote to give to the ailing soldiers.” He gave a sigh. “Unfortunately, there must be some casualties, otherwise the military won’t consider it life-threatening enough to pay top dollar for the medicine. We don’t anticipate more than a couple hundred deaths from the first dose.” He motioned to Caleb, “Put the lid back on.” Caleb did so, tightening the lid back into its groove and sliding the hoops onto the barrel.

“Well,” I said, “don’t you think when Union soldiers start droppin’ dead after eatin’ pork, they’re going to figure it was bad pork that killed ‘em?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” the doctor said. “The poison does not have to be ingested.”

“Doesn’t have to be what?”

“Eaten,” Blair answered removing his neckerchief.

“A person can be infected through breathing in the spores,” the doctor continued, “or by simply handling meat with the bacteria. When inhaled, symptoms closely resemble those of influenza and pneumonia of the lungs. When actually eaten, one appears to be suffering from dysentery. Those incompetent physicians will be bumbling around trying to discover the source of illness, but only we will have the cure-all.”

“Does the cure-all work?” I asked.

The doctor got angry at my question, and he yanked his neckerchief off. His face was flushed. “Yes, it works! Do you think we’re stupid enough to cause an outbreak without having the solution? What profit would be in that?”

“The antidote has been tested, and it works,” Blair said calmly. He pointed at the barrels on the ground and the open boxcar. “Load the rest of those into the car.” Caleb stooped to lift the barrel, and Blair motioned to me. “Help him.”

I obediently stooped on the other side of the barrel, and together me and Caleb lifted the barrel and loaded it into the boxcar. We did the same with the remaining five, and slid the door closed. Then Blair stood behind the boxcar, and he took a harmonica out of his breast pocket. He held it to his mouth and blew gently on the highest note, and while he held that note, he raised his other hand in the air, and light formed on his fingertips. A thin red beam of light shot out from his hand down onto the railroad tracks, and it burned with a sharp flame as it cut right through the iron rails. Once they were permanently damaged, Blair stopped blowing on the harmonica, and the red light disappeared.

“No going back now,” he said.

We walked back to the hotel, tossing our neckerchiefs into a small fire that remained from a smoldering shop. When we got to the sitting room, Blair gave me a comfortable seat, and he poured us all a drink. He was keen to notice my misgivings.

“You can’t get rich off working for peanuts, boy,” he said setting a glass of whiskey in front of me. “You want to make some real money? This is how you do it.”

I sat with my leather gauntlets on. “And you want for me to deliver barrels of this to—”

“The men in Vicksburg. Grant is laying siege to the city. They’ll be getting pretty hungry in there.”

“And let them die, after they eat your poisoned pork.”

He didn’t like my tone. He took a deep breath. “If it makes you feel better, we can keep a small amount of the antidote in reserve to give to the people of Vicksburg once they surrender. They won’t die overnight.” He studied me in earnest. “You can’t save them. There’s nothing you or I can do to change the inevitable outcome. Tell him, Irene,” he said looking at her.

“The fate of Vicksburg is sealed,” Irene said flatly. “The nail head that holds the South’s two halves together shall be pried loose, and the Gibraltar of the Confederacy will fall. The Mississippi river will soon be entirely in Union hands.”

I took a breath and said, “Well, if Vicksburg is under siege, how am I supposed to get a wagon of salted pork in there?”

“There are small roads in the southern woods that lead into the city,” Blair said. “Some of them are guarded by only a handful of soldiers. I will arrange a pass for you, and Mrs. August can make sure the Union sentries never remember seeing you.”

I was hesitant.

“They’ll pay you well for the pork,” Blair said confidently. “You can set your own price. I’ll even let you keep it for all your hard work.”

I drank my whiskey quietly. He gave me a minute to think on it.

Then he said, “It’s time for you to make a choice, Abel Owens. We cannot allow someone with divided loyalties into our circle. You’re either with us or you’re not. Oh, and let’s not forget about the intelligence. Sorry you feel the way you do about Mrs. August, but that’s the only way we can retrieve those memories. It’ll be painless, I promise. What do you say?”

They waited, all five of them. Their eyes were on me, except for Irene Adler’s, who instead sat listening intently. They were expecting an answer. And I had never turned down an opportunity to scheme a little money. This was golden.

Reluctantly, I gave them their answer: “We were given gifts. It is our responsibility to use those gifts for more than just our own personal gain.”

Blair sighed with a smile and shook his head. “Where did you hear that? That sounds like something somebody told you. That doesn’t sound like the Abel Owens who broke into our house and ate up our pot pie.” He sat across from me, almost laughing at me. Caleb stood at his side with his arms crossed staring hard at me. For once, I saw Mrs. August not smiling. She seemed confused. Blair crossed his legs and held his whiskey glass in his hand. “You know what really amuses me, is the hypocrisy. You’re taking the moral high ground now, but in a month when your pockets are still empty and you’ve got no food or roof over your head, you’ll be right back to your old ways, stealing and cheating. Because that’s what you are, Owens. You’re never going to change.” He started to take a sip, but didn’t. And his tone became more despairing as he stared into his glass.

“I wish I could say I’m surprised at your answer, but it truly is useless. Just like the direction this war is taking. Emancipation. A noble war aim to be sure. But to what end? So that a semi-barbarous race of Negroes can go on worshipping fetishes and practicing polygamy? There’s no use in trying to empower them. Or you.” He looked at me forlornly, and then finally sipped his drink.

The doctor was fidgeting. He edged closer to Blair and rubbed his hands anxiously. “General?” Blair seemed to be ignoring him. The doctor grew impatient and hissed, “We had a deal.”

Blair was still studying his near empty glass of whiskey. “Yes, we did, didn’t we? I was just waiting for Owens to finish his drink.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Sorry you can’t be joining us, Owens,” Blair said, “but it looks like you’ll be spending your time with Dr. Essek instead of delivering salt pork to Vicksburg. Also, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist you give Jackson’s memories to us.” Then he looked at the doctor. “After that, he’s all yours.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” I asked nervously. But Caleb was already pacing over to me. I started to stand up, but his fist plowed into the side of my head, and I blacked out.

When I came to, I was lying on a hard table. My arms and legs were strapped down, and I had no clothes on. It felt like waking up after a night of drinking. I didn’t recognize my surroundings. “Where am I?” I mumbled.

The doctor’s voice answered, “I was wondering when you were going to wake up.” I could hear him doing something at another table. He was stirring around where I couldn’t see him.

“Where are my gloves?”

“You won’t need them.”

“Where’s my clothes?” I tried to sit up, but a large leather strap across my chest held me down. So I looked around the dusty room the best I could. It looked like a storage cellar with odds and ends, but I also noticed on almost every available surface were all sorts of strangely shaped glassware. Many of them were empty, others were partially filled with fluids. There were also surgeon’s tools laid out including varying knives, a crooked pair of scissors, and a bone saw. I saw my clothes piled in a corner of the room on the floor along with my gray cap and leather gauntlets. I tilted my head to get a glimpse of the doctor’s back. “What’s in those glasses?”

“Bacillus anthracis,” he said casually with his back to me. After a couple seconds, he turned and smiled at me. “The same bacteria I poisoned the salted pork with.”

On the other side of me I noticed a pair of legs on another table. I couldn’t see past the waist, but it was a man. He wasn’t moving. “Who’s that?”

“A volunteer.”

“Is he dead?”

He ignored my question.

“What, are you stealin’ bodies off the battlefield?” I asked. “Robbin’ the dead?”

“Look who’s talking. Those look like US army shoes to me.”

I glanced at my pile of clothes again, and it was then that I noticed a derringer laying on some books across the room. There were some other articles of clothing probably belonging to the dead man. I had no idea if the gun was loaded. I tried not to stare at it.

The doctor came around and looked down on me with a smirk on his pale face. “Besides, he wasn’t dead when he got here.” He started pushing the table with the man on it. Apparently it had wheels because the table started rolling past me. “Let’s go ahead and move him out of the way.”

As it rolled past, I saw the upper body. The arms were bruised and swollen purple and red with cut marks on them. And the neck and face had horrible wounds with huge black scabs formed over. I screamed with terror.

“You’re as bad as my wife,” the doctor said. “She couldn’t handle dead things, either.” He wheeled the body out of sight, and came walking back.

“Wh—what happened to him?”

“That’s what happens when you come into contact with the bacteria.”

“The poisoned salt pork does that!?”

“If you touch it. Eating it has a different effect.”

I cursed my luck. “Ain’t you worried about gettin’ sick?”

“I would if I didn’t have the antidote.” He went back to work at his other table tinkering with glasses and scribbling on paper. “Don’t worry. He’s not contagious.”

“So why didn’t you give it to him?” I asked.

“Why didn’t I give what to him?”

“The antidote.”

He turned around and looked at me quite puzzled. “Because I wanted to know how long it would take him to die.”

I started panicking. “You’re going to do that to me, ain’t you? You’re going to make me sick like him!”

Dr. Essek smiled. “It wouldn’t be very productive to infect you with the bacteria, would it? Especially since I already know the outcome. No, I have something else in store for you.” He turned his back to me again to resume his work. Then his voice became quite grave. “You have no idea how special you are, do you? I’ve been waiting a long time for one just like you. Those fools, all they care about is money. Money, money. Ha! What good is money if you’re going to grow old and die in a few years. I am after so much more than simply getting rich. They’ll long be dead with their wealth caught up in legacies, and I’ll still be enjoying life in full vigor because I intend to live forever.” I could see a smile off the side of his face. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” he said. Then he turned around and asked with a disturbing grin, “Do you find me mad? Do you find me—sinister?”

“I think you’re a quack. That’s what I think.”

“What do you know?” he said with annoyance and turned away from me. “You’re just a fool kid.” He started tinkering with his liquids again. “You probably can’t even read.”

“I can read.”

“Oh you can, can you?” I lay there for another minute without us talking. Finally he turned around again, “Alright, let’s get started, shall we?” He was holding some steel cylinder with a needle pointing out the end, and he poked me in the crevice of my arm with it.

“Ow! What the hell are you doing?”

“Hold still, boy.” He held it in place with one hand, and began pulling up on the lever with the other. As he did so, the glass tube in the middle started filling up with red. It was my blood. I started cussing at him. When the tube was full with blood, he pulled the needle out of my arm, and he held it up to look at it. “There it is. More precious than gold.” He put it somewhere in a safe place, and then picked up a surgeon’s scalpel and leaned over me. He sliced an inch across my belly leaving a red open cut, and I screamed. He laughed wickedly. “Oh, how I love the screaming. I do miss field work.”

I started begging him to stop, but he only laughed again and said, “But we’ve only just started.”

I was trying to turn to stone, but I couldn’t. I was struggling against the straps holding me down, banging my head against the table and squirming. It irritated him and he held the scalpel up to my neck. “The more you move, the bigger the cuts are! I’d prefer to keep you alive for as long as possible. But if you—”

His words were interrupted by an explosion outside that shook the room and unsettled the dust. Some of his glasses fell and broke on the floor, and the doctor dropped to his knees. He got up cussing with his fist shaking in the air.

“Damn you! Stupid!” He got up and ranted to himself as he paced around tripping over things and trying to clean up the mess. “You don’t set fire to a building with gas lights! Burn the whole town down. I don’t care. Just leave me one little space…is that too much to ask? Interrupt my work…”

He was careless. He had dropped the scalpel onto my stomach and left it there to sweep up the broken glass. This was my only chance. I jiggled my stomach until the scalpel slid between my right arm and my body. Then I strained until I got my fingers on it, and I turned it over in my hand until it was bloody and slippery. The doctor finished sweeping up, and he dropped the broken glass into an old flour tin. Then he gathered up two overturned boxes and stacked them. “This has got to go,” he said picking them up. “I’ll be right back.”

As soon as he was out of sight, I started cutting into the strap around my wrist. The sharp scalpel cut nicely through the brown leather. I took another look across the room at the derringer. It hadn’t moved. My right hand snapped free from the restraint. Then I unbuckled the large leather belt across my chest. Once that was off, I sat up and fought the straps around my ankles. My left hand was the last to go. I was fighting to get it loose when the doctor reappeared. He spooked at the sight of me loose, and rushed at me right as I got my left hand free of the strap, and in the panic I dropped the scalpel. He grabbed my wrist, but my skin started sapping his bare hand, and he quickly turned loose as if he had grabbed a hot skillet.

I lunged for the derringer. He raced around the table, but I got to the gun, and I cocked the hammer as I leveled it, and fired. The shot hit him right square in the forehead and he went down. Then I caught my breath.

My stomach was bleeding. I tore a strip from the dead man’s clothes, and used it as a bandage. And I jumped into my clothes. I didn’t bother lacing my brogans. With my cap and gloves in my hands, I started to leave. I had unlocked the door when I heard the sound of the doctor getting up. I turned around expecting to find I had only grazed him somehow, but there he was, rising to his feet with a dark red hole in his forehead where the bullet had entered. It wasn’t dripping blood. He was gnashing his teeth with a horrible expression of rage, and his eyes had reddened, so red that I couldn’t even see the whites of his eyes. I cursed in shock and darted out of his cellar, and as I ran up the stairs, I heard his furious scream follow me: “Get back here you little son of a bitch!”

When I got up to the top of the stairs, I was in a smoke-filled alley. I ran into the street and saw I was still in Jackson. What used to be the building next door had utterly exploded and was now a pile of rubble and small sputtering fires. It must have been an ammunition factory. I looked up into the tree that stood nearby, and there was the body of a girl hanging by one foot from the largest limb. I took off running. I ran all the way across town until I was past the depot and leaning against the side of a shed catching my breath. I couldn’t get his face out of my mind; that pale face with the red bullet hole in the forehead.

I sat for a few minutes expecting him to come looking for me. But he never appeared. After a while I wandered back to the train depot and found the boxcar that we had loaded the barrels of salted pork into. I knew it because of the odd cut in the tracks where Blair had used his thin red beam of light. I slid the door open, and all the barrels were still inside. I knew what he had done. He had left it there on purpose. Since I wouldn’t be delivering it into Vicksburg, he had settled for leaving it for the scattered remnants of Confederate forces in the area who would eventually reoccupy Jackson. I stared at the barrels for a minute. Then I went and gathered scraps of wooden crates and charred wood from burned buildings, and I threw them into the boxcar. After I found a small fire where I could poke the end of a stick, I carried a flame back and lit the pile I had made. Once the fire got going, I closed the door to the boxcar leaving just a crack, and I left it to burn.

I set out walking down the damaged tracks heading west towards Vicksburg. The iron rails had been torn up from the track and bent out of shape. Some of them were wrapped around the trunks of trees like neckties. The sun was hidden behind gray evening clouds, and it was gloomy. I probably walked for an hour over the wooden crossties. As it got darker, I spied a train sitting up in the distance. I thought it might be engineers from Jackson trying to repair the track. When I got up closer, however, I saw what a sorry mistake I had made. They weren’t engineers at all, but Yankee soldiers tearing up the track as they went along. They saw me and I tried to run, but a couple shots fired in the air halted me.

They surrounded me like I was some known felon accused of multiple murders. I offered my furlough pass, but they ignored it. They hustled me up past the cars where they were working to decide what to do with me. I could smell the rum on them. Other soldiers jeered as we passed. They were heaping all their hate on me because it was the easy thing to do. Their sergeant didn’t know what to do with me either, and he looked drunk, too. I noticed the supply wagons then. These were the rearguard of the Union army. They were talking about marching me down the tracks in front of the locomotive, but before we got that far one of them rushed forward and shoved me to the ground. I was kicked and ordered to get up, which I did, and then I was shoved to the ground again by a different soldier. We were walking on gravel, and it cut my hands when I fell. They were standing all around me, taunting me in their twangy northern accents.

“Look at Jeff Davis’ boy! Fighting to keep his slaves.”

“You like fighting for a fake president, reb?”

“He’s the president of something. President of crackers and traitors.”

“You never did separate from the Union. You were always a part of it. Weren’t you?”

“You’re not recognized.”

“Not even by your daddy.”

They all laughed. I was on my hands and knees, and my cap had been knocked off. The one standing directly in front of me smirked down at me. “Damn, your white-trash mama must be proud now.”

I’ve been kicked and beat before more than once. I’ve had my moments of anger just like anyone else. But there, on the ground at the end of the day with it sprinkling rain, a rage was triggered within me. And something on the inside started changing. My face quivered with fury. I slowly raised my eyes to meet his, and I watched the smirk on the Yankee fade from his mouth. I could feel my nose and cheekbones, my gnashing teeth, even my hair turning to stone. The muscles in my arms and legs cracked as I stood up. And the pebbles of gravel actually moved and gathered at my feet, boosting my height as I rose like an invulnerable monument above the startled soldiers surrounding me.

My fists had become little boulders. And the first thing I did was backhand the blowhard who had insulted my poor mother. He flew about fifty feet and crashed into a supply wagon almost overturning it. He looked like a squirrel slung over a fence railing. The others backed up in alarm and opened fire. Their bullets just ricocheted harmlessly off me. I snatched the ends of their muskets and pulled them in where I could get a hold of them and hammer their skulls. One blow was all it took. I grabbed one of them by the ankle and tossed him way up into the air screaming. He landed on the other side of the train. The others threw their fired muskets down and took off running into the field.

Then other soldiers started shooting from a distance. They approached, not fully understanding why I wasn’t dropping dead. I picked up an iron rail that they had torn loose from the track and let them come closer. As they came within reach, I started swinging with both hands, and I sent them flying.

When I turned back to flesh, there were casings of rock around my feet and ankles, and they broke like pottery as I pulled my feet out and took a step forward. I walked over to a limber and caisson cart. They didn’t like that, and really started shooting at me then. In stone form again and minnie balls ricocheting off me, I busted open the ammunition chests and started taking out the rifled artillery projectiles. I hurled one clumsily at a Yankee, and it wobbled in the air and missed him by several feet. I tried again, this time spinning the giant bullet as I threw it so that it flew in a spiral. It went much farther and smoother that time, and struck him with a thud. One after another, I emptied the ammunition chests throwing spiral after spiral at the men shooting at me. Even if I missed, I came close enough to make them dive for cover. One throw hit a horse in the flank, and it whinnied in pain upsetting the wagon team.

When I was finished with that, I changed to flesh again and moved to another wagon. This one was filled with black powder kegs. I took one of them out of the wagon, but it got away from me and rolled on the ground. For a minute I stood there at the back of the wagon as a group of Yankees surrounded me from behind. I turned around and changed back to stone just in time for them all to be aiming their muskets at me. I was holding a second powder keg and instinctively dropped it as one of them foolishly fired. The bullet went into the wagon and it exploded violently throwing them all on their backs, but my feet were planted firmly on the ground and I didn’t budge. Nor was I harmed. The Yankees lay there on the ground moaning and stunned as I turned back to flesh.

I walked to the next wagon. It was filled with wooden barrels, and they didn’t say POWDER on the side. I was going to plant a powder keg in there and ignite it, but then I decided maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. I had seen the effects of contact with the poison. And the doctor had said, it could be breathed. I wasn’t sure what to do. So I tore the canvas cover off and turned the wagon over so that all the pork barrels rolled in the mud. There were horses loose from their teams cantering about in circles, and men trying to load their muskets with damp powder. Just then a lone rider rode up and stopped his horse before me. It was almost dark, but I could recognize Caleb.

He aimed his revolver and fired six rounds at my body. I crouched and feigned like I was injured, and he dismounted and came at me. I was ready for him. I stood up right as he threw a punch into my gut. I heard his knuckles crack against my stone stomach, and he groaned in pain clutching his hand as he staggered a few steps from me. He scowled and flew at me again, this time kicking me. But all he did was hurt his foot. Then he picked up a musket and swung it at my head. It broke splintering the stock. He swung a few more times for good measure before he finally gave up.

“You’re dead,” he said, and he wheeled around and mounted his horse again. And he rode off. I slowly started turning back to flesh. I walked back up to the tracks and spent a few minutes looking for my cap, but I couldn’t find it in the dark. That was when I saw the light.

It looked like a lighthouse beacon sweeping the dark field of broken supply wagons and litter. It wasn’t a train because it was too far from the railroad tracks, and it sure wasn’t a ship. The light was searching. The beacon moved up to the tracks where I was, and I hid behind the locomotive as the light swept over it. It slowly shone on the train and track, and I saw my gray cap on the ground as the light passed over it. The light moved away, and I moved from my hiding place to grab my cap. But right as I was picking it up, the light suddenly reversed and moved back to where I was, and I was standing right in the search light holding my dirty cap. The beacon glared, and I darted back behind the train.

I heard horse hooves approaching. They came very near and stopped on the other side of the train. “Owens!” It was Blair’s voice. “I see the doctor wasn’t able to keep you out of trouble. Perhaps I can help.” His tall form came pacing around the front of the locomotive. Then a sharp note on the harmonica emitted from him, and a bright light from his open hand shone right in my eyes. He had a hard tone to his voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The light from his hand faded, and he started to blow on the harmonica again.

“Thank you, sir, for the limelight!” a voice called out.

We both turned to look. There was a group of men approaching us from the north side of the tracks, and they were armed. We stood there in surprise as they came closer. They were Mississippians, and they weren’t Union. The leader of the group, who was roughly dressed like the others, walked up to Blair and examined him. “Well, how ‘bout this? We expected to spy a Yankee regiment, but instead we capture a Union general.” He smiled up at Blair who was frowning. The Confederate ranger glanced at me, and then fished the harmonica out of Blair’s breast pocket. Then he took a step back admiring the musical instrument, and he put it to his mouth and started piping the tune to “The Bonnie Blue Flag”.

Immediately Blair’s eyes flashed and a violet wave radiated from him bathing the Confederate soldiers in an uncanny purple light. They sunk to their knees shielding their eyes, and he shone the dark light on them for several seconds. When it stopped, they were lying on the ground moaning sickly with black spots on their skin. Blair walked over to the ranger and took his harmonica out of the man’s hand. “No one is taking me prisoner.”

I ducked underneath one of the cars and escaped to the other side. The harmonica gave a high note, and then I saw the thin red beam of light come shooting through from the other side. It cut anything in its path. I did not want to find out what it would do to me in stone form.

“You had your chance for a cut of the pie, Owens,” Blair hollered. “Now all you have is death.”

I climbed up the ladder on my side of the boxcar. When I got to the top, I saw him on the ground backing up to see me. His red light barely missed me, almost taking off my ear as I dropped flat on my stomach.

“Don’t make me come up there!”

I lay there for a second. Then I heard him climbing up the ladder. I got up and took off running. I leaped over the gap and landed on the next car and kept running. When I got to the end of that car, I jumped, and in midair I glimpsed that thin red light shoot past me as I dove headlong into the bunker of the locomotive. I was hoping I would land on a pile of coal, but they had chopped wood in there, and it hurt so bad when I landed that I groaned. I heard Blair running along the car tops. I miserably crawled out of the fuel bunker into the cab of the locomotive. The furnace was still burning. I knew nothing about driving a train, but there was a large lever hanging in my face, so I pulled on it. The train jerked. We were still sitting, though. I grabbed the large bar sticking out of the floor, and I pushed on that. I started pushing and yanking on everything in there. Two brass levers near my left hand were sticking out, and I turned them.

The train started moving.

I turned around to see if Blair was behind me. He was standing on the car behind the fuel bunker looking down on me in the locomotive cab. I wanted for the train to go faster, and I pulled on a cord. The whistle blew. Immediately he lit up and threw a blinding blaze of light into the cab. It was hot like July sun, burning my face. I jumped from the locomotive out the side and hit the ground flat as the train kept going. He watched me from up top as the distance between us grew. I lay there on the ground beside the track as the train rolled along. I knew he would jump off to follow me, so as soon as I lost sight of him, I got up and jumped onto the last car and climbed inside.

My skin was burned and it hurt to the touch. I gingerly felt my face, fearing he had blistered me like he did the others, but it didn’t seem he had. I crawled to the back of the car and sat there resting and waiting for what would happen next. I didn’t see or hear him. And the train gradually picked up speed knocking along the tracks heading west. I sat there for a long time letting the train carry me away from him and the Union supply wagons, and I started thinking maybe I had lost him for good.

Then I heard the train whistle. It alarmed me, and I knew I had to either get off the train or confront him. At that point, the train was moving too fast to jump blindly into the dark and break a leg or my neck. So I started feeling around in the car. A crowbar had been left, and I picked it up and started working my way out to hang on the outside of the moving car. I reached the ladder and cautiously climbed up, peeping to see if he was up there before I fully climbed up.

He wasn’t there. So I went on up, and started making my way along the tops of the cars toward the locomotive. I felt very vulnerable. He could shoot me with that thin red light in a second, and I’d be dead. But there was plenty enough noise from the train running along the tracks to drown out my footsteps. I held the crowbar in my gloved hands. When I got two cars behind the locomotive, I hunkered down and crept forward. I tried to look down into the locomotive cab, but it was like looking into a black cave except for the glowing furnace hole which had been shut. I stayed there in that position for a couple minutes, too timid to move further. Then there was a glow as from a lantern. But it wasn’t in front of me. The light was from behind me.

I turned around and there he was standing at the end of the car. His hands had a soft orange glow, and he was watching me. I stood up to face him. He called out to me over the clatter of the train.

“What do you plan on doing with that crowbar?”

“I ain’t going to Vicksburg.”

“You already said that.” We stood there looking at each other with the night wind blowing our hair. “You young people today, you think you know it all. You think you’ve got it all figured out.” He didn’t sound angry. And he wasn’t holding his harmonica. “You’re a lost cause, Owens. It only makes sense that you would fight for one. We are the future. The world is changing. And if you don’t change with it, you’re going to be left behind. Are you ready for it?”

“I’ll be ready always,” I answered.

“You’re ready for nothing. You don’t know who you are or what you’re doing. I’m not going to be bested by a kid. You had potential. You could have become something. But you’d rather just stay where you’re at and waste it all.” He shrugged. “Well, each to his own.”

“If I get captured, I’m gonna tell Grant what you’ve done.”

He reared back and threw his hands forward with a bright blaze of light that wavered with the sound of the clattering track. I shielded my face with my gloved hands, but the light was so intense that it started burning me through my clothes. I backed up a couple steps and fell between the cars. The coupling broke my fall. But my crowbar clanged and went down onto the blurring track. It got caught in front of one of the wheels, and it screeched as the sparks flew. Blair’s head appeared overhead, and his eyes were two burning lights. He held his hand over the edge, and his fingertips glowed red, and I saw the thin red light forming on his hand ready to shoot straight down and cut through me.

Then the train derailed.

He lost his balance and tried desperately to hold on as the cars squealed and shuddered. I grabbed the ladder and held on for dear life. The train was deviating from the track and sliding through the ground. The cars started to jackknife. I thought I would be crushed. The locomotive tilted and dug in, and a shower of dirt hit us as I was thrown from the train. The crash was deafening. I hit the ground and tumbled as one of the cars fell over on its side and everything came to a screeching halt. The boiler in the engine blew and a sheet of steam started pouring out into the air.

I saw Blair lying on the ground several feet from me. At first I thought he was dead, but then he started moving and trying to get up. I seized the opportunity. I slid my leather gauntlets off and staggered to my feet. He was on his knees when I pounced on his back and clamped my bare hands onto his face. He howled and his eyes flashed as his vigor seeped into my hands and pulsed through my veins. He resisted me fiercely. I gritted my teeth as he fought to shake me off, and the light beamed from his body in different directions. Slowly the light from him evanesced, and then his legs gave out and he fell down taking me with him. Only then did I let go. Not that I minded killing him, I just didn’t want him in my head forever. I got up and started walking away.

The steam hissed and the pistons hammered. And suddenly I felt a tingling course through my body. It flowed through my legs and arms and on out my fingertips. Literally. A flash of light burst from my hands like cannon shot. It started coming out my eyes and mouth, too, so much that I reeled on my feet. I couldn’t control it any more than a river busting through a dam. I was scared I had gone too far. I couldn’t see him, but I thought I heard Blair’s voice murmur, “Damn fool.”

Each minute seemed like forever as I staggered around spitting out light in all directions. It was just like with the stone. I had no control over it whatsoever. I fell more than once, got up and staggered some more. Gradually, though, the escaping steam was spent, and the hissing lessened to a whisper. The pistons in the engine slowed to a skipping heartbeat, and only then did the light escaping my body go out.

It took several minutes for me to recover. My head was swimming and my ears tingling. I almost felt sick, but finally I was able to get up and walk straight. Blair was gone. The train was killed. And I was stranded somewhere a few miles from Vicksburg.

I left the wreck and wandered across open fields in the dark for some time without any incident. Then at a certain point, I heard artillery, and I knew that I was closing in on the city. The artillery grew louder, and the light from my body came back. The louder the artillery fire, the brighter the light. Each time a cannon fired, my body lit up and a beam of light shot out of me up into the night sky. It was like hiccupping, and it went on until I was able to put some distance between me and the Union army laying siege to Vicksburg.

By dawn it was still cloudy but no rain. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew how to get there, though I had never been there. I had come to a small plantation, and as I neared the large house, there was a dead soldier in the drive, and he looked Confederate. Other than him, I saw ne’er a soul. I walked up the steps of the front porch. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in.

I didn’t realize how dirty I was until I stepped inside the clean rich house with its polished wood and carpeted stairs. I almost took my shoes off so I wouldn’t get dirt on the floor. The grandfather clock showed almost ten o’clock in the morning. They had a large mirror on the wall, and I looked at my reflection. My face and neck were red with a bad sunburn where Blair had lit up on me.

I didn’t bother tiptoeing. She was quick to hear my footsteps on the hardwood floor. “Frank? Is that you?” She was sitting in the parlor with a blank sheet of paper in her lap as I entered the room.

“Not Frank,” I said in a manly voice.

She seemed a little alarmed, but there was no fear in her voice. “Who are you?”

“You seem surprised. You didn’t see me comin’?”

Irene Adler let out a breath of relief and annoyance. “Where’s Frank? Frank,” she called.”

“Frank’s not chere.” The curtains were drawn, and being cloudy outside as it was, it was a little dark inside the house. “Why are you sittin’ in the dark?” I asked.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” There was a fancy decanter of amber liquor on the small table along with two clean glasses. “What are you doing here?” she asked. I walked over and picked up the decanter. “Be careful with that. That’s from Europe.”

After pouring myself a small drink, I sniffed the liquor in my glass and took a sip. It was bourbon. “What are you doing?”

“I’m reading,” she said with mild irritation.

“I thought you were blind.”

“I am blind, you foozler. I’m reading Braille.”

“What’s Braille?”

“Writing for the blind. What are you doing here? Where’s Frank?”

“I don’t know.” I swirled the bourbon in the bottom of my glass. It was then I noticed the bumps on the paper in her lap. There were no words. Her fingers rested over a line where I had interrupted her. She had very feminine hands. “Train made an unscheduled stop, so I walked the rest of the way.”

“How did you get away from the doctor?” she asked.

“I shot him.”

“You what?”

“He was pretty mad about it.”

“Oh god,” she said more fretful than fearful.

“So was that the deal? Me for the poison?”

She laid the bumpy sheet to the side. “The deal was between Frank and the doctor. I simply advised.” It felt funny talking to someone who was looking at you but they weren’t. “You better leave now before Frank gets back. He’ll kill you if he finds you here.”

“He done tried that.” I couldn’t tell if she was curious or unsettled by that remark. I could sense she was feeling for something, trying to read my emotions and thoughts. But they weren’t fully my thoughts and feelings; some of it was Frank’s. I knew it was confusing her, like a dog sniffing my pants leg where something had rubbed up against me.

“Did Frank tell you about this place?” she asked.

“No. He didn’t need to.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No. But I took somep’n from him. He won’t be shining for a while.”

She wasn’t quite so confident after that piece of news. “He doesn’t need his power to kill you. A bullet will suffice.”

“Tell me something, Miss Adler. Did you see a financial loss in your future? Becaise I don’t think all that salted pork is going to get to its destination.”

“We haven’t lost anything,” she asserted. “Why, what did you do?”

“You don’t know? I thought you knew everythang.” That stung her. I could tell by her mouth. I walked over to the piano and hit a key, and a small light appeared over my open palm for just a couple seconds. “You know, this is pretty pleasant when you get the hang of it.” I was really enjoying it. She was the perfect picture of unsettling news sitting there on her little sofa. I hit another key, and the light appeared again just slightly different than the first time. I started hitting two and three keys at once up and down the piano, observing the spasmodic change in color and shape of the light above my other hand. It was noise, not music.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “You’re going to get it out of tune.”

I ignored her and kept hitting the keys. She kept fussing at me to stop, but I was too enthralled by the light. I was stomping on her last nerve.

“Stop banging on the—STOP BANGING ON MY GODDAMN PIANO!” she roared.

There was a moment of silence following her sudden outburst. She was very still, and so was I. I didn’t touch the piano again.

“You carry a piana around with you?” I stepped away from the piano almost chuckling. “Good grief. Most people carry a harmonica or a fiddle.”

“I don’t play the fiddle, boy.”

“Don’t call me boy.”

“Oh, pardon me,” she said mockingly. “Big, strong man. Come to rob a woman all by yourself. Maybe you want to pull your pistol on me. I bet the old widows are scared to death of you.”

“Maybe I could sell your piana for firewood. Reckon it’ll burn?”

“You’re going to burn if you don’t get out of here.”

I finished my drink and set the empty glass down. “I don’t know how he does it. I think he overplans thangs. That’s why they don’t work out perfectly. I don’t make plans. I jes’ live life as it comes.”

“That’s why you’ll never amount to anything,” she said turning away.

That made me angry. “Shut up, Irene. I’ll smack you.” I was surprising myself. I have never been one to show much respect, but I had never back-talked a wealthy lady like that before. It surprised her, too. She turned her head towards me a little, and her lips parted a tiny bit at my gall. But it quickly passed, and her audacity took hold again. She rose from her seat and came towards me totally defiant, fumbling to feel the furniture between me and her.

“I have never feared Frank,” she stated flatly. “And I do not fear you.” She came up very close to me, standing right in my face at eye level, so close that her breasts brushed the front of my shirt and I could taste her sweet breath. I felt hate and desire at the same time right then. It was weird. “Would you like to see your future?” she asked with a queer edge to her voice. Then she took off her eyeglasses, and began to finger the black blindfold. “Do you want to see—what I see!?”

She yanked the blindfold off, and stared right through my soul with blind eyes cloudy as a fog at sea. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. She was a tempest, clenching her white teeth, filled with beautiful fury. I thought she was going to hit me. But she did something different. She reached up and grabbed my head with both hands, and I heard her voice boom inside my brain like thunder: Look into my mind!

I lost my hold on reality right then. I had no sense of the present or my body. I was no longer inside the house. The summer sun blazed above in the heavens, and my view descended upon the earth where stretched out as far as the eye could see lay a vast multitude upon the littered battlefield. The eyes of the dead stared up from the ground, broken and bloodied from the horrors of war. Confederates. Southerners. Soldiers like me. Irene’s voice echoed in my ears: Behold, the flower of the South. The glory of your armies. This is your future.

Then I saw a splendid white magnolia suddenly wither and die in the seconds it takes to suck in one’s breath. I saw the people all over the confederacy suffering and weeping. It all passed before me as in panoramic view: desolation and defeat, women and children, the young and the elderly in a state of sickness, starvation, and death. I beheld the might of the Union army, an endless sea of dark blue, marching dreadfully all over the South like a swarm of locusts, laying waste to everything and leaving a trail of destruction behind. And Irene’s voice spoke again:

You will lose this war. The strength of your arm will fail. You will fall like wheat as we tread upon your backs and reap the life of the land. The die has been cast, and the board set. Already your famed rebel leader is planning the final wager. He will follow in the course laid out for him. He will push in one last desperate offensive to win against all odds. And he will fail. It shall end in the broken invincibility of the Southern army. You will die in vain fighting a lost cause. But your punishment will not end there.

Then I saw something marvelous. I saw things I had never imagined; machines that moved without horses, machines with wings that flew in the air without balloons. I saw the rise and fall of nations and governments, and generations of people coming and passing before my very eyes. Knowledge was increased, and people ran to and fro over all the earth as they grew ever stranger in their speech and clothing. But they were all too familiarly human at the core, just like us.

Irene’s voice spoke: Generations from now, your people shall be a blight upon the earth, a hissing to all who pass by. You shall be hated of all nations, and your flag shall burn in infamy. Shame will be your legacy, and poverty will be your birthright. Our posterity shall endure and extend over all the earth while yours will fade into obscurity. Your children shall speak the language of the North, and your men will bow to the glory of the Union. They will kiss our hands, and rejoice in our strength. The sons and daughters of the South will spit upon the graves of you who fight this war, and they will curse the flag you wave in battle. The glory of your rebel leaders shall be torn down, and smash upon the ground. In time, the very memory of you shall be erased from the minds of your descendants. There shall be no Dixie.

The vision began to blur, and the images in my sight became jumbled together. I screamed, and I heard Irene screaming. I lost the vision. She had her hands on my head, squeezing my temples. And then we collapsed, both of us.

We lay there on the floor next to each other, unable to rise, groaning and slipping in and out of consciousness. I don’t know how long. I had no sense of time. Some of the images bounced back for a fleeting moment, and quickly faded again. I had no control over the thoughts that flew through my head like birds swooping in through a window, and then quickly back out again. It was a paralysis of mind; gnashing with anger, fear, remorse, and helplessness.

I saw Irene. I felt her in my head like the others. But it was different with her. It was so much more far-reaching. I had tapped into a lower vein below the bottom of the well where there seemed to be no end of flow in either direction. I knew her better than her companions. Even Blair didn’t quite fully understand her, though he knew her body. She would never again look at her own beauty in the mirror as other women do, but could only accept the bitterness of seeing herself through the mind’s eye of others. I could feel her soul rubbing against mine, burning with the anguish of years of unwanted vision. This was her curse, and now it was mine. For a time.

I had fainted, and I was sick a certain number of days from the disturbing vision. In delirium I rambled. “You have to…listen…they can’t go. Send word to…Virginia. They’ll die. I saw…dead.”

My mind kept drifting to the field of dead. The image in my mind would not leave me. I saw an oak tree. It was old and grand. Then the axe struck the root and the tree was felled. It lay upon the ground and was chopped into many small logs and carried away. I saw the caves dug into the hills of Vicksburg. The starving women and children and slaves huddling in the dark. When I awoke, they gave me morphine because I was frantic. At first I didn’t know where I was or who I was talking to, but it became clear to me in time that it was a Union doctor and I was in a field hospital surrounded by wounded Union soldiers. Their assaults on the redans of Vicksburg had cost them dearly. I did not see Dr. Essek again, though I kept fearing he would suddenly appear at my bedside at any moment with his wicked grin and that red hole in his forehead.

I almost fell when I climbed out of bed, I was so weak on my legs. A mirror had been hung above a water basin, and as I passed it, that streak of white froze me and I halted in my tracks. I stared at my reflection in disbelief and touched my hair. It felt real enough. It took a few seconds for me to accept it as reality, but my hair had turned white, just a streak of it at the front in my bangs.

The doctor was quick to make a passing remark. “Had quite a scare, did you?”

I turned from the mirror, lost and bewildered. “Where is…Irene?”

“Who?”

“Miss Adler. The woman.”

“What woman?”

“The woman, where you found me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He insisted that I stay in the bed. I found my gloves tucked under my pillow; the leather gauntlets that Caleb had placed on my hands when he captured me on Marye’s Heights.

It was July 4th when Vicksburg surrendered. I was there. My rawbony countrymen dragging out of the city in marching columns, nearly thirty thousand of them, starved and dejected, they laid down their muskets in silent humility. The sparse Unionists from the surrounding area had gathered around to witness the event, and they danced and cheered with such a wild uncontrolled pleasure, they almost looked like they might be having seizures on their feet. I had seen Haitian slaves perform their convulsive spirit dances, and there was a similarity. Before it was even dark, the Yankees began shooting fireworks into the sky and singing their hymns. They were drinking too, and in a short time the singing was becoming slurred. It went on all night with us sitting and listening to it. I was placed with the other Confederate prisoners. They figured I was insane anyway, and probably next to harmless.

Though I was prepared for it, I did not return to a northern prison. Two days after the surrender, all of the enlisted men and many of the lower ranking Confederate officers were paroled, and then the prisoner exchanges started. Though they still had the spirit of fight in them, it would be in vain. Through Miss Adler I had gotten a glimpse into the future. But it didn’t take a prophet to predict that the South was not going to win this war. It couldn’t. I had seen what Irene showed me, but because of my ability I also saw something that she did not intend; an alternate future. Our fates are not sealed.

You lied, Irene. I saw it for my own. The future isn’t fully written yet. There is more than one possible future. There is no one set path that we’re doomed to follow. And I saw another war. Another conflict on the horizon, though not within my lifetime. Far into the future. I believe Stonewall was trying to tell me that. Those with mutability will be outcasts in society. They will be hated and feared because they are misunderstood and different. Some of them will even become slaves. But they will rise up and rebel. And there will be blood. If that path is followed.

The future isn’t fully written yet.

 

                                                                                                   The End

 

The Daily Citizen  
Vicksburg, Miss.  
June 18, 1863

Grant’s forces did no firing yesterday morning. They were very still and continued so until nightfall when they suddenly opened fire with artillery that lasted three hours. Several Vicksburg citizens and numerous soldiers reported seeing lights during the bombardment. We believe the enemy was signaling their gunboats on the other side of us, though no gunboats were seen on the river. The lights coincided perfectly with the artillery, and immediately ceased when the bombardment ceased. We have not been able to ascertain the meaning of these signals.


End file.
